The Cook Pine

In islands of salt where the winds comb the sea, A slender green needle is stitched by decree, Not cedar nor fir by the botanist's name, Yet older than names is its stubborn flame. They exiled it from coral, from volcanic stone, And planted it in gardens it never has known, It sees, it measures the traveling light, And answers with tilt, an unteachable right. For most trees stand as straight as a line, But this one confesses the world’s hidden sign, Eight degrees—just a whisper—its faithful incline, A quiet lounging and obedience that won't resign. North of the equator, it bows to the south, As if a lost prayer were remembered in mouth, South of the equator, it leans to the north, As if summoned back to a first sacred worth. What is this compass, no iron, no chart, No captain’s brass circle, no sailor’s art, Only the sun’s long story, season by season, Only the pull of meaning disguised as reason. Some say it is light that persuades the crown, Some say it is gravity writing it down, But deeper than mechanism, root, ring, and bone, Is how a thing exiled remembers its home. Isaiah saw deserts made tender with rain, Where acacia, like the Torah binds us again; And pine, in its exile, keeps turning its crown, Two green witnesses: a covenant and holy ground And Lebanon’s glory, the conifer tall, Is carried to Zion, to beautify all, To honor the sanctuary, “the place of His feet,” Where wood praises and the world is made sweet. Where thorn and brier once throttled the ground, A green, oath-kept answer is raised without sound. The exile unknots, and the desolation wakes, And ruins learn holiness, because Presence returns. Call it cypress, call it fir, call it pine, It's essence sparkles like sweetness of wine, Yet what stays constant, whatever history say, Is defying endurance that will not decay. So Israel in exile, reborn in each land, Still angles its longing by covenant hand, A people transplanted, yet yoked to a song, Every generation yearns to know where they belong. Not soil but the covenant gives bearings its grace, Not borders but blessing appoints us a place, And prayer is a vector no empire can break, A tilt of the heart for God's living sake. O Cook pine, thin psalm in a foreign-built yard, Your persistent geometry keeps watch like a guard, Wherever we’re planted, let our bodies incline, To Zion, to Jerusalem, the evergreen line.