Teenage Shrub

They shall be like trees planted by the rivers of water,
that bring forth fruit in season,
their leaf also shall not wither,
and whatsoever they do shall prosper.
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff
which the wind driveth away.  -Psalm 1

Sometimes I imagine myself
a cloud-piercing cedar, or a regal sequoia, or even
a leafed-out, prairie cottonwood, shaped like a wineglass —

one my dad would proudly gaze upon, despite my sticky catkins
dropping on the hood of his Pontiac Parisienne,
despite the missed beer cap under the seat, despite
leaving the windows down overnight, trying to dilute
the smell of stale cigarette smoke,
and on the way to church, the following morning, telling him,
“It was one of my friends, again.”

The pastor reads the verses and I look around at faces,
and what I see is a church full of oaks.
Can’t I be an oak?
Planted in a broad valley, near a bright river?
I try to imagine it,
but end up feeling like a shrub, clinging to late summer.

I look up through the stained glass window and yearn to join
my friends: the dreaming dogwoods ranging over the river hill,
the cool smooth sumac swaying to the Rolling Stones, their leafy hems
swirling, revealing their showy pinkness, the wolf willows
slinking in their silvery thickets, howling like Keith Moon.

The pastor ends his sermon with a warning.
I bend my sinful branches down to take a look.
Yes, my roots are dry.
I turn my leaf-eyes on the patched sod and cracked clay
beyond my straggly canopy,
take in my arid horizon.

“Look, here’s the river!” says the pastor, as though speaking to me.
“Why try to take root outside the licit stream of the Church?”
His words hit my heart like an ash cudgel. He’s earnest.
Truly worried about my tree status.

My parents sit several pews behind.
I feel the eyes of my father on me, like God, really.

I can’t explain it! I want to avoid my chaff outcome,
but I long to be with my friends who aren’t burdened
with church and these eternal choices.

The pastor is praying and I am praying too, saying. “God, just for now,
let me be a shrub, and when I’m older, I promise,
I’ll aspire to be, at minimum,
your trembling aspen.