The Briar Philosopher - The Buckeye Tree

The Buckeye Tree

There is a tree that grows in this part of the country. This tree is called the Buckeye Tree. Its fruit has rather a strange property in that half of it is edible and half of it is poisonous. This puts me in mind of a great deal of this nation’s history.

I do respect this nation, don’t get me wrong but, given my upbringing, my take on the history of how it came to be is a bit different from the norm.

It’s hard to express that difference so I’ll just say it like this:

Once upon a time,

two hundred and forty years ago, more or less,

some men with good ideas planted a seed in the soil of time.

We call the seed liberty.

We call the seed freedom.

Once upon a time,

at the same time, more or less,

some men, the same men,

men with greedy ideas planted a seed,

in fact the same seed, in the soil of time.

We call the seed tragedy.

We call the seed genocide.

We call the seed slavery.

From this seed, in the course of time,

grew a tree, grew a nation.

And the fruits of that tree, as like creates like,

are half promise and half poison.

This is a nation of hope.

This is a nation of hatred.

This is a nation of liberty.

This is a nation of lies.

This is a nation goodness.

This is a nation of greed.

It would be easy to glorify those men who planted liberty in the soil of tyranny, in the soil of time.

It would be easy to condemn those men who planted tragedy in the soil of liberty, in the soil of time.

But they are inseparable, as we are inseparable.

They are irreconcilable, as we are irreconcilable.

We are the children of goodness and greed,

of hope and hatred,

of lies and liberty.

We are the fruits of the Buckeye tree.

Some of my Grandmothers and Grandfathers were immigrants.

Some of my Grandfathers and Grandmothers were indigenous.

They were all savage and they were all civil.

They all created and they all destroyed.

Some of their dreams were the other’s nightmares.

Some of their nightmares were the other’s dreams.

They were all villains and they were all victims.

It is as simple as that.

It is as complicated as that.

They all hoped to live in peace and prosperity,

to live freely and raise their children on land given them by grace.

They all feared that those other people,

people of strange color and strange clothing and strange ways

would come and take from them all that they had;

their lives,

their loves,

their longings.

We are all the color of hope.

We are all the color of fear.

After many decades of plantings and reapings

our fruit still does not fall far from the tree.

In the coming times, we must make of this fruit something new.

For the buckeye can be ground into flour;

the poison leached away with water.

If we grind together these fruits that we are

and wash away the bitterness and bile within us

we can serve the future to all our children at the same table.

It is my hope that this will be so.

It is my fear that this will not be so.

We are all kin. We are all the same color:

The color Human.