Foreign Object/Foreign Body

This is a solid maple I have passed by for twenty years,

A wrought iron hook fastened to the trunk long before

For hanging a lantern to light the woodland path

My mind holds its image walking the route I have daily driven into deeper ruts.

When first seen, the arm, partially absorbed into the trunk,

Now, only the outer curve of the beckoning fingertip,

If you know where to look,

Four feet off the ground in folds of striated bark

The girth of the tree

Expanded around it

Absorbing the upturned curve of iron

Still, I experienced surprise when I realised what had happened,

Though I knew the tree was claiming it.

This is an oyster at the bottom of the sea,

Cupping a grain of sand

Washed into it an aeon ago

A grain it couldn't expel by force

Now a hard object surrounds it,

A pearl nacreous and iridescent

Undiscovered in the depths.

Years of softening the shape of the original irritant,

Making a visual beauty of adversity.

If beauty remains unseen, does it exist, does it have value?

This is the pain in my heart,

Nailed up thoughtlessly about four feet off the ground

I walk past it every day and still see its tip.

I know where to look,

Flesh has gradually grown around it,

Concealing it, but feeling out its exact location,

Each razor edge pressing against each cell,

Like a jagged piece of shrapnel the doctor couldn't remove, without the patient dying.

This is the pain in my heart,

Covered in a hard and lustrous shell.

A grain of sand isolated in the depths,

Now unseen

Safe from dissolution.

Valuable and invaluable

Never confronting the shard of truth that caused it.

Some people say it doesn't hurt the being,

It strengthens it,

This edephoecotropism,

This swallowing whole at a tree’s pace.

Though how would they know, not being the tree?

When the tree is cut down, the iron will break the blade.

Body parts that are surgically removed can still be felt in the mind.

Women dive for pearls,

Men search right and left to find them,

Deliberately cause their creation,

Value their lustre, sell all they have to obtain them.

Nevertheless, when the pearl is released, the oyster will die.