Can I Get A Pass?

 Can I Get A Pass?

 

or a little mercy—

the kind that hushes even the shiver in the leaves.

I’ve been laboring since dawn—

the kind of labor counted in acorns, wind, and worry—

said the squirrel, still a quick brown spark in the branches,

flitting from limb to limb like a thought that would not settle,

and the forest answered him with laughter.

The birds, being birds, turned mockery into song—

a bright unruly weather of chirps and shining eyes,

as though all spring had been a rehearsal

for the sweet small privilege of teasing a squirrel.

Hershel sighed for a holiday.

Sally, meanwhile, wanted one as well—

preferably with cake and a patch of afternoon sun,

which seemed, for squirrel ambition, almost courtly.

You’re nuts,

said one voice, and not with kindness enough to make it praise.

Ask again in five minutes, when hunger comes back wearing its old crown.

We all have a stake in this—

if not in heart, then surely in bark and timber.

Then even the deer and mountain lions lost their solemn manners

and laughed as though some ancient burden had skipped them for a day,

and even the trees leaned softly into the joke,

bending in the breeze with that old wooden laughter

that begins in the leaves and ends in the smallest wheeze.

So there it was—

a brief and shining mercy, dressed up as a punchline.