The Fragrant Tree
(2026)

The following passages were composed over the course of a few weeks before the birth of my second daughter. I wish to turn it into a picture book. but for now am sharing it here so it doesn’t just gather dust. If any artist with ties to Lebanon would like to help, please contact me.

Learning

You met me by the fragrant tree with oil and with bread
You watered me at the icy spring and offered me your bed

You walked me in the morning to the clouds that kiss this land.
You taught me with your story. You trained me with your hand.

“You are hope.” You said, “You are what your people need.”
"You are this Cedar." you said, "Many branches from just one seed."

"Your solemn duty on this floating island above the world below
Will grant them life or cast them death with each Cedar seed you throw."

"You must practice the ritual." You said "it now belongs to you."
"Each life will soon be measured by a Cedar seed you threw."

"Each Cedar seed you throw is first found in Cedar cone"
"And Cedar Cone you'll find on ground close to its Cedar home."

"First find the Cone then crack it to release the life within
Then prepare each seed by cleaning for the charring to begin"

"Then place a flame beneath a stone on which the seeds are then so cast
And leave them undisturbed until one side is charred at last"

"Remove them from the heat and clear the Earth to take them back
Release them from clasped hands so they may fall brown-up or black"

"Each Cone decides a person's life each seed bestows them years
Unless it lands darkness to sky, then death instead appears"

"Each day you will come and like the birds you will toil with the seeds
Each night they will come to fly them down to answer your people's needs"

"You are their hope. Do not fail them. They count on you. Be good.
The more you cast, the more may thrive to adulthood."

You persisted day by day until the ritual was learned
You guided with compassion when the seed got fully burned

You heeded as parent-teacher when with your wisdom you had led
"For living is to waking what sleeping is to dead…

…Life is but an instant and in an instant it will be gone.
Death, like night, will fade to life at each breaking of dawn"

Many cones you saw collected, countless seeds you witnessed thrown.
Under that tree the years passed by like spring water over stone

The ritual continued, the process perfected over time
You stood awatch as a thousand moons ceded to the sunshine

Like mountains old, your hair grew white. Your words began to slow.
"It soon will be. Time for you. To. Know."

Burning

I awoke to a cracking rumble. I felt the wind. I felt it still.
I got up amid the darkness. I crested the rocky hill.

I saw the glow consume the tree in manic frenzied licks
Through plumes of ash I saw and smelled both life and death in mix.

I felt its heat as I had felt it many times before
What had once heated Cedar seeds now scorched their mother to the floor.

I yelled and spun in futile search where I might place the blame
I grasped at dirt and threw the Earth upon the hungry flame

I cried in desperation, "I need you, teacher! Guide me! Tell me what to do!"
"I do not know what course to take,
if I do not have you!"

I filled our bowls with water from the spring to quench the beast
All night I fought its searing breath as it gorged upon its feast.

By daylight all was quiet. Only the spring trickled it's song.
A blackened husk in place of what had flourished for so long

I crunched on coals as I snuffed out the embers that held on.
The Cones, all ash. The tree, made bare.
But you, completely gone.

And so, alone, with persistence my ritual proceeded.
With steadfast care I cast the seeds for I knew they remained needed.

But lifeless was each Cone I salvaged to then take apart
For the ritual demanded heat but each seed was burned to start

How shall I continue when my losses only grow?
What is a quiver to the arrow that has lost its bow?

In my isolation does my challenge have an end
Or am I doomed to drift alone without a guide or friend?

Hands of soot cast lifelessly in hopeless rhythm when
A shimmer at last found my eye beside the fox's den.

Returning

It was a bead of glass formed in the likeness of a face
With round black eyes, a nose, a mouth, and all things in their place.

It was quite strange to see it twinkling on the ashen ground.
In all my years of cone searching, none like it had been found

It stared at me with eyes wide open like it knew my soul
It left behind a patch of green when I removed it from the coal

It caught the gaze of passing ants, which halted their marching flow
It somehow lured a bird to me returning from below

"It must be sown," said the small bird, “its worth exceeds its weight.”
"Its role in the ritual should not be made to wait."

"Every successive night that passes threatens 'You' and 'I'
For they will come to steal it. You must not let them try."

And so I held it in my robes and there it safely stayed
Till I could sew it silently under night's protective shade

It remained there as clouds of locusts came and went
It endured there through crawling blights of vermin and serpent

It evaded there the thunderous hail and piercing gale of storms
It sequestered there from drought and floods and threats of many forms

It lay there undisturbed as sickness came upon our home
It hid there from the digging paws of hunting beasts that roam

It silently withstood attempts to pry it from the land
While cedar seeds and I continued our old dance by hand

One morning my aging body led me back to it to see
You, like I, those years ago, a child under the tree.

I brought you bread and oil and cared for you like I once was
And taught you of our sacred rite, for whom, and what it does

Until you knew the steps that my old hands could hardly cast,
I led you day by day until that day became my last.

—

We move like suns across the sky. From birth to night we set.
We pass through It, both You and I. We learn. We then forget.

We scale and fall each lesson on a mountain we call time.
We, the beads, as seeds must sew each foothold of the climb.

—-

To those who came before us and to those who will come after
For all the love and pain and hope and loss and all the laughter

-Nick Oueijan