Our beech tree is starting to wear our yard like a dress. I would rather envision our trees, especially the tulip poplar positioned like stilts or sentries. I have been trimming branches so I don't have to bend over to walk to the studio or so I can see the pond from my wheel. These trees do give us the illusion of isolation, the freedom to pursue our artistic dreams without being watched--a big change from 1987 when the terrain was one large osage orange tree isolated in a meadow, overlooking the six-acre pond.
[That's a tulip poplar flower in the segmented bowl:]
The Copper Beech
Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard
like a dress,
with limbs low enough
for me to enter it
and climb
the crooked ladder
to where
I could lean
against the trunk
and practice being alone.
One day,
I heard the sound
before I saw it,
rain fell darkening the sidewalk.
Sitting close to the center,
not very high
in the branches,
I heard it
hitting the high leaves,
and I was happy,
watching it happen
without it happening to me.
-- "The Copper Beech" BY MARIE HOWE
Found at The Poetry Foundation website. Reprinted there from 'What the Living Do', W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright © by Marie Howe.
[That's a tulip poplar flower in the segmented bowl:]
The Copper BeechImmense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard
like a dress,
with limbs low enough
for me to enter it
and climb
the crooked ladder
to where
I could lean
against the trunk
and practice being alone.
One day,
I heard the sound
before I saw it,
rain fell darkening the sidewalk.
Sitting close to the center,
not very high
in the branches,
I heard it
hitting the high leaves,
and I was happy,
watching it happen
without it happening to me.
-- "The Copper Beech" BY MARIE HOWE
Found at The Poetry Foundation website. Reprinted there from 'What the Living Do', W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright © by Marie Howe.
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