Greenish Irony
Changming Yuan
You wish to be a Douglas fir
Tall, straight, almost immortal
But you stand like a Peking willow
Prone to cankers, full of twisted twigs
Worse still, you are not so resistant
As the authentic willow that can bend gracefully
Shake off all its unwanted leaves in autumn
When there is a wind blowing even from nowhere
No matter how much sunshine you receive
During the summer, you have nothing but scars
To show off against winter storms
The scars that you can never shake off
JONAH magazine 
The title of the “Greenish Irony” threw me off, but the human parallels to a tree prone to scars and knobs feels applicable to more of us than just the deluded lover!