The Magnolia Tree Poem by Tristian Ford

As the mysterious becomes ordinary, the ordinary becomes mysterious.
I walk away from the world, Away from the people who say
I've become distant, pompous yet still effete, and even imperious.
Not tyrannical with control, or power over them, just,
Why someone would use their power to take life In general, so serious.
So, I wandered in search of someone or something who could understand my brilliance. Wondering how those people would Utter and mutter such affronts. I walked down a fairly dry road,
But the ditches on either side still held water from the heavy rain we had had during the past few months. Some magnolias stood bare, gray, and leafless.
However, in the middle of those stood one full of evergreen, deciduous, and alternate smooth-margined leaves that left me curious.
So, I studied its purple flowers that were cuplike and lithely fragrant at its branch tips that each held three sepals, seven petals arranged in four series in which were many embowed spirally arranged stamens elbowed towards me.

A Magnolia Tree
Atween
one hundred and four-thousand
Fallen purple leaves.
I reckoned were from the other surrounding trees.
A sight that mysteriously, extraordinarily
Awakened something inside of me.
I drifted into meditation as my attention went to
breathing.
Which went to returning to, and remaining in,
The present moment- to anchor me in that then and there, on purpose without judgment.
It was only accidentally one's body felt exceedingly heavy.

Then just above a whisper
But below the wind's sympathetic breeze,
the tree spoke, slowly,
'What is progress made of? '
'Hard work.' I supposed.
It proclaimed,
'But that is not always true.
Hard work alone will not always insure progress will permanently come to you.
Honesty does not necessarily make attainment,
But does dishonesty pay? '
'No! ' I Conveyed
The tree then bespoke,
'Terribly upsetting, isn't it,
To know that neither crookedness nor sincerity
succeeds or paves the way?
You know plenty of persons who have worked hard but have gotten nearly nothing for it day after day.

Well, that's where you and I have been making a
mistake.

We have swung like pendulums from one paramount to the other. First, we've tried to succeed by one method, then by another.

When crookedness fails, some of you preach honesty; When that fails, you turn bitterly back to dubiousness, and some of you return with thunder.

Nothing really pays like obedience
to law- not man's law but God's law. A law that should live in your hearts and be lived out,
alive,
and in living color.

So take the mere negativeness that others around you seem to throw, Turn it into something positive for yourself, for your work, and the environment
By understanding thy self, and why.
Then study as you brilliantly begin to grow.'

I thought all this stuff in my head in a couple of split seconds.
Finally snapping out of my trance.
A tear fell down my cheek
As the supernatural apparition unenraptured me.
But, I stood up on my feet and hugged tightly,
The Magnolia Tree.