A free-verse poem about a Chinese tallow tree in my backyard. |
Our backyard is home to a forty-year-old Chinese tallow tree that soars toward the sky some forty-plus feet tall. It shades the yard in summer and provides nesting space for birds and squirrels. It thrives each spring with the rebirth of green leaves to soak up the sunshine and create shade. It’s a messy tree in the springtime. Numerous small branches remain dormant and devoid of leaves until they fall, littering the grass below with their dead bodies. This spring heralded the usual scattering of small fallen branches, but one branch five-feet long and one inch in diameter became ensnared during its descent through lower branches by the myriad of networking, dead, ever-smaller twigs at the end of another five-foot long, barren branch. Their interlocking dead twigs securely anchoring both branches together in a highly visible open space mid-tree. I thought these brown, leafless dead limbs were ugly and eagerly waited for a springtime thunderstorm’s strong winds to dislodge them. Fall, why don’t you? Fall! Be gone! After every storm with gusts of high wind, I’d look hoping to see these branches on the lawn. It is now summer, and the two branches stubbornly have persisted, annoying me daily. Today, however, I had an epiphany. At the dawn’s first light, I stood looking out at the tree. That’s when I noticed for the first time the trapped branch gently swaying with the slight breeze, slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth. Then my eyes and mind suddenly opened, and I saw it for what it truly is … Nature’s yard art on aerial display, celebrating the season, withstanding all efforts to dismantle it. Please check out my ten books: http://www.amazon.com/Jr.-Harry-E.-Gilleland/e/B004SVLY02/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 |