Two Mighty Oaks - poem

About a month back I was challenged to come up with a wedding gift for Dave and Connie Horton.

'Twas a sad / happy occasion.
Happy because they were formally getting hitched and there would be a party at their newish, custom built home on the shore of Dean Lake, near by to Iron Bridge.
Sad because Dave was not well and worse, he had recently received a shitty prognosis of metastasizing cancer. His esophagus and liver had been hit.

In a felicitous (I thought) moment,  I remembered that brother Neil had some oak seedling he had been guarding. Many he had given to uncle John. Perhaps he had a couple left over. And indeed he did, and graciously set them out for me.

It was a bit of a visual disappointment on picking them up. There were two of them, each in its own small faded plastic margarine container. But they would do.

What was next needed was a narrative. No amount of dressing up, nor ornamentation would help these two matchstick like protrusions from the soil convey the notion of a wedding gift. Perhaps some text could not only rescue this as a gift, but also help to explain the symbolism that had occurred to me, which might make the gift resonate.

To further enhance the experience I took a picture of the parent tree in Neil's yard. It was a shot looking skyward from close to the base of the tree. Only tree and sky in the frame. A leafless tree I should add, but it filled the frame nicely, with it's sturdy trunk, and solid branches, and delicate twigs.
Once printed, about  5" x 7", it made a good cover for the transparent plastic enclosure that held the two pots.

And then came the poem. Hand written on stiff white card stock (actually surplus picture framing matte) it read:

Two Mighty Oaks

Alive.

& in need of love

& attention,

in exchange for unending rewards.

Don't be fooled 

by appearances.

I m a g i n e
what is yet to come.