Trees: a poem and a reflection

 

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

So, Joyce loved trees and waxed poetic one summer day in 1913. I’m guessing she liked them vertical, as they are intended.

Here, we’ve about had our fill of trees reposing in the horizontal. One hit our cottage. A neighbor’s 10-foot diameter tree uprooted, tearing out her driveway and crashing into the next house. Down the street, one fell right into the porch and roof of another cottage, knocking it off its foundation.

It’s been a busy month. Plus, we’ve been subject to a record-breaking drought. Farmers are plowing their crops under; most grass has baked to a brown, crispy mat.

So when we woke up Tuesday morning to a downpour, we smiled. Long overdue, radar indicated that this would last all day so we packed up and headed to Kokomo. There’s always something to do at the homestead.

Uh oh.

What we didn’t expect…but then our lives are full of the unexpected…was what greeted us as we turned up the driveway. The tree next to the workshop had split in two and that part had snapped off, falling into the yard.

Yes, ANOTHER tree adventure.

This time, however, the crashing trunk did NOT hit the workshop; it missed the wooded fence that neighbor Mike and my Mike had built together.

Snapped off

 It just fell into the yard, a great, green, pile of limbs and leaves.

Ok. We know the drill. Mike started to saw. I started to haul. Neighbor Mike, the man of a thousand tools, arrived home from work and pitched in.

2 hours later, the yard was clear. And we crawled into the house where it was cool.

Among the green, the orange shirt