Step within that ligneous womb;
receive
the Tree’s embrace.
Press spine to sapwood,
cheek to curve of fibrous wall.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Within that smooth-edged concavity,
lend your heart,
the rapid patter of that bright muscle’s
beat —
so contrary to arboreal thrum
that has pulsed a
century
too low for human ears to hear,
more deliberate,
more at ease.
Emerge renewed with Sylvan tongue,
beneath a sky unfolding
dream.
–C.Birde, 3/16
Ocean’s of green grass, lush and spreading, rolling. Breath of wind stirs each green blade to whispering. Vast blue sky expands, cloudless, pouring sunlight. And at the center of all, the Tree. It exceeds imagination, defies possibility. Massive trunk a smooth patchwork of ivory and pale green-edged grays. Sinuous, leafless limbs support the sky, arch outward and beckon Spring. Its spread is easily hundreds of feet in all directions, reaching beyond the stone wall once intended to contain it. The wall tumbles on its course, following the contours of spilling land, but it no longer has purpose. The Tree has grown beyond all boundaries.
Hope and heartache —
that small fluctuating flock
gathered in slender maple’s limbs,
suspended adrift,
strung at the ends of gilt threads.
Once square sheets of paper,
smooth white bellies inscribed
in ink and symbol,
folded, creased, refolded,
each careful line pressed smooth.
Cathartic act —
bright birds hatched,
conjured from one dimension,
each a care transfigured
and set to flutter within that humble tree
in ephemeral offering
to Time and weather’s whim
and dissolution —
And yet, year round,
the tree leans,
abloom in brilliant color.
–C.Birde
Rainwater pooled and collected at her feet, pulsed with an Age of Memory.
He stood just off the path, observing his brethren arrayed along the downward slope of hill. Tall and hale, unbent by time, clad in elbow-patched tweeds. We exchanged wordless greeting, each unwilling to disturb the other’s contemplation. I did not learn his name, but no doubt, we will meet again.
Earth exhaled a drift of fog over compressed snow…today, Winter has returned.
A young Japanese Red Maple casts her blue shadow upon white snow. Trees paint in shadow, each work a self-portrait laid over the Earth’s seasonal canvas.
The Sweetgum’s cache of seed pods are heaped upon the earth in offering. Each burlike sphere contains two small seeds. Each seed retains the bright green, star-leafed memory of its parent, and all of its potential.
In Greenwood Cemetery, the White Ash lifts sinuous limbs, etching the flattened plate of January sky.
The Sycamore’s distinctive and mottled skin is beautifully revealed once its leaves have drifted free. Often, I walk past this tree and its siblings, and have seen the trio clothed in Spring’s green and festooned with compact pom-pom seedpods. In Summer, they shed like snakes, curled sheaths of bark accumulating in the grass at their feet. But I think they might be most striking when plucked bare by Winter’s touch.