The Heart of A Tree

What did I notice today?

In the heat

my time short

I didn’t pause, 

but on the way back 

I noticed it again ~  

The heart shaped tree stump.

A tree cut almost down to the ground.

 To count the fading rings ~ impossible

   It showed me 

    the inner beauty of trees, 

their hearts, 

    the wood, leaves and shade

 we take so much for granted

lives, grows and breathes.

“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; 

like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. 

Life on earth is inconceivable without trees.”

~ Anton Chekhov, 

playwright, short story writer

(1860 - 1904)

Treasures

Cool evening

Sky still aglow

Children playing 

in the school yard

Teenagers tossing a 

frisbee in a parking lot

Two women walking 

their tiny dogs a block away

A small evergreen showing off 

little brown cones that will be seed.

Cool evening

Sky still aglow

“Treasure comes in many forms.”

~ S.A.Rodriguez,  Treasure Tracks

Never Pruned of Family

An old and stately tree grows

between sidewalk and fence 

never pruned of family 

feels and lives through seasons 

lives a steady life to grow

wider each year. 

Each spring branches out 

tender sprouted limbs with

a new crop of leaves 

roots growing deeper with time

between sidewalk and fence

an old and stately tree grows.

“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.”

~ George Santayana, 

philosopher and poet

Out on a Limb

Out on a limb 

I swing and sway 

whether wind is

north or south, 

east or west.

I learn to balance, 

or just hang on 

with faith that 

my strength will 

keep me safe.

When retirement comes, 

and wild winds change, 

I’m given a choice ~

to stay out on the limb,

or choose another tree.

“A human being is a deciding being.”

~ Viktor E. Frankl, M.D.

(1905 - 1997)

Becoming a Christmas Tree (2012) - Revised

“Hey Joe!  What about this one?  Should we leave it? Doesn’t look like much more than firewood to me.”   

“Nope, we’re supposed to take everything. They can figure out what to do with it. We just cut’em and haul'em.”  

*****

A deafening buzz in the snowy quietness, ended my life in the forest. I was the last tree cut and tossed on top of the load of my neighbours on a smelly grumbling thing. Cold air rushed through my sparse branches when we started to move. It didn’t make sense. I was lying down!

And now look at me. If you can. Down here, now at the bottom of a pile of lush, soft green trees.  All shapes and sizes of humans come in here pawing through us all. When their hands find me, always by accident, they think I am part of some other much handsomer tree.  At first they’d pull at me and then let go in disgust when they saw how bent my branches were.

*****

“Firewood – that’s all it’s good for.” 

“That’s a charley brown Christmas tree if I ever saw one.”  

“Someone will buy him – someone with no sense and too many decorations."  

“Our room is far too grand for that ugly old stump.  I don’t even know why they’ve kept it in this lot.” 

****

Finally.  I’m alone in the Christmas tree lot, lights still blinking over the sign that announced in big bold letters: ‘Fresh cut Christmas trees!’ Fresh! Hmph!  I’ve been lying here in this muck moon to moon. All the others have gone and here I am – cold and lonely, with my bare bottom exposed for all to see.  Soggy branches on one side and drying up on top!  My branches feel stiffer and colder with each incredibly slow day. Being fire wood is beginning to sound good. Oh, I do wish that child would stop crying. He’s dripping salt water all over me. He’s holding my top branch so tight he’s going to take all my few remaining needles off!  

Then I heard a soft voice reminding me of the breezes in the forest in springtime: “OK sweetie, he’s really not much! I don’t know what your dad’s going to think. You know what he said. He wanted a tall, bushy tree and this one is short and stumpy.” 

Then I was being picked up out of the muck. It felt so good to at last to have the dirty half melted snow shaken onto the ground.  I could hear my branches sigh with relief as the young mother tucked me in the back of the little family’s beat up old car. My branches began to relax, and my crooked trunk lay on a soft blanket in the warmth of the old car.  The little one was no longer crying, thank goodness.  One chubby little hand stretched from the front seat to hold onto an unruly twig at my very top. In old car’s warmth, I felt like a real decorated Christmas tree. 

“I never thought it was such a bad little tree. 

It’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”

~ A Charle Brown Christmas

**Author’s note: This is one of the first stories that I posted on my blog (December 2012). I have revised it considerably. It was an early attempt at telling a story from the perspective of a tree - with pretty good grammar and vocabulary! 

Legacy

It’s in our roots

A tree barren of a life 

that waved in the wind, 

branches stiff and cold;

saddened when a full life ends

but the joy I feel with 

new exuberant growth

brings me comfort.

“One must have roots to bloom, sprout, grow and branch out.”

~ Jeffrey G. Duarte, author

Yet to Be

The Christmas tree stood silent

Twinkling lights had all been lit

A decoration hung all alone 

on a grand old Christmas tree.

It waited for all the glitter and stars

from bulging boxes and bags ~

last years memories wrapped carefully, tucked and stored away.

“Always, the path unwinds through lemony sun pools and pitch vine tunnels.”

~ Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory

It is Never

It is never the tree trunk 

but the cedar boughs surrounding it 

and the wanton branch sneaking up 

its great furrowed bark. Maybe it is

a shoot that arose from the grand old tree’s roots or maybe a root from another tree crawled 

across the street beneath asphalt

where ordinary cars, utility vans 

with a business scrolled on the side 

or a lumbering bus, full of a multitude of passengers, 

nonchalantly traveling hither and yon. Regardless, together the grand old trunk,

the cedar boughs and the wayward shoot

suggest the progress we all make in our lives

crawling beneath asphalt and under the

rumble and noise of today’s progress

I think I’d like to grow as steadily as 

the grand old elm, the spreading cedar or 

maybe the determined shoot of some other tree.

“Progress takes time and discipline.”

~ Ronnie Coleman

(from brainyquote.com)

Tucked In

Mushrooms tucked in the base of a tree

 ~ life bubbling up to absorb

winter’s dead leaves and twigs.

“Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.
~ Thomas Carlyle

On an Afternoon Walk ~ In Song

Winter or summer, fall or spring, this Song Tree tells me what season is upon us. In winter it grows a long white beard, in summer’s shade it is home for all manner of life, in the fall the wind cleans debris from its branches and hollows. Today it seemed to lean farther back on its old dry trunk to sing to the avenue of the leaf green tips ready to burst all around.

“There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, 

but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.”

~ Minnie Aumônier, (1865 - 1952)

*artist, costume designer, poet and writer

*from <thedailygardener.org>