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“With maturity, the bonsai slowly comes into harmony,
believing it is a 30-foot-tall tree in the landscape.”
                    —Sign at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Sapling

I’ve read that sign—a bunch of bunk.
What bonsai thinks it’s ten yards high?
The people who tend my twigs and trunk
are several times as tall as I.
Trapped in this pot, my prospects shrunk,
if I were a weeping cherry, I’d cry.

Mature Tree

The people who tend my twigs and trunk?
For decades I’ve seen them smile and sigh
as I’ve sat here like a Shingon monk
and they’ve flourished, faded, and passed by.
At last I know—who would’ve thunk?—
that compared to them, I brush the sky.

Blue and white pointing gloved hand  See News