Being Held
A poem about trees and life
I’ve read this poem out loud, and here it is for you.
The Willow tree,
growing in the gully next to our small, rusted lake cottage
grew long twisted green branches each summer.
When I was naughty,
on rare occasion
and my grandpa was visiting,
he would say “Go pick a Willow switch”,
which he knew that for me,
was enough punishment
without ever using it.
Trees hold me.
In the nearby woods,
I breathed the fleeting, faint scent of pussy willow in Spring,
the wafting fragrance of Lilacs.
I gazed at the birth of Forsythia, the color of sunshine.
In Summer, the punchy scent of Sassafras emerged
when my sister and I whittled its bark for tea,
our tender young hearts cradled.
Trees hold me.
I was born into a family of elders
who sought earthly conquests from the woods.
As a child, I waltzed with my dad,
the only dance I knew with him,
methodically stepping into
cracking branches,
eyes trained toward the soft, damp ground
scanning for the holy grail, the puckered, earth-colored,
soft-bodied, pungent-scented
morels.
Trees hold me.
During the torture years, aged nine to twelve
when mom was my step-dad’s punching bag
I gorged on the berries from his Mulberry tree.
Taking solace in the sweetness and peace
that existed outside those walls.
The berries stained my hands
and the ground purple,
the same shade of mom’s bruised skin.
Trees hold me.
At grandma and grandpa’s house of safety,
there stood a giant oak tree, with
one branch impaled with a fork,
a side-show oddity shown to visitors.
The fork entered the tree during a deadly twin-tornado
when I was three.
The impaled oak tree,
plus thirty people crammed in their basement
all survived the storm’s devastation,
the tree with the fork the only structure of theirs
that was left standing.
The tree held them.
My favorite childhood book,
so often read that I can still recite it
was a story about Miss Suzy,
a girl squirrel who lived at the tip, tip top of a tall oak tree.
She drank from acorn cups, and swept her floor with oak branches.
She was attacked by a bullying bunch of red squirrels,
who stole her home.
In the end she prevailed,
saved by a band of wooden toy soldiers.
Trees hold me.
When my children were small,
I read them The Giving Tree,
a story illustrated with simple black and white drawings,
About an apple tree and a boy.
The boy kept asking and taking from the tree,
While the tree kept loving and giving.
And one day the tree had nothing left to give,
And the boy was an old man who had nothing left to take.
Lessons on giving and taking and loving.
Trees hold me.
Once, in our busy subdivision blanketed with trees,
our neighbor clear-cut his backyard.
He hired a wrecking crew,
killing twenty-seven trees,
so they could build a concrete pad and
a basketball court.
The jaws of death churned through them,
one by one,
even the Mother Trees,
who had earned their right to be.
Every cut stabbed my heart, every fallen branch a wound.
I kept thinking
what a selfish,
thoughtless act of indulgence.
For boys to bounce a ball.
Trees hold me
I later learned about Mother Trees,
How they stand strong through disease and weather
And how there is no competition among them,
how they warn other species of impending danger,
nurturing all through their roots of love,
Miles and miles of underground sustenance
keeping others alive even after they perish.
A vast, twisting network of mycelium
like a series of umbilical cords,
connecting families to one another
and to us.
I teach my grandson this,
while we have a conversation
with the magnificent Magnolia in their
Virginia yard.
Trees hold me.
I hug them hard, leaning in to their strength,
pouring into them my excess energy
to help them heal
themselves
and me.
My conversations with them are real.
They talk back, if I listen long enough.
They hurt, like me.
They love, like me.
They grieve, like me.
They give, like me.
They keep giving and giving and giving, without taking.
For Christmases and homes and paper,
for shopping malls and packaging
But also for praying and grieving.
For clean air and oxygen.
For loving and living.
For life.
Trees hold me.
Hold me still.
And keep holding.
I like how you intertwine trees into your life stories. It reminds me of a book "The Overstory", by Richard Powers. It has stories of people from all over the world, and how a tree or trees, impacted their lives. I had forgotten about the fork in the tree story. I wish I would have remembered that for my story about the Palm Sunday tornadoes. We live in a neighborhood that has been around since 1913, and unfortunately, the old trees have about had it. The sound of the chainsaw is frequent. Fortunately, Lafayette is planting new trees to replace them. They planted 57 on our street alone. We have a lovely maple that they actually water and fertilize. I'm grateful I live in a town that appreciates trees, but it's hard to see the Mother Trees go.
Love love love.....learning more and more about your magic, your story. The reason why when you looked at me and thanked me for doing the work, I knew, you knew. Yet, we never discussed you or your past, what you lived thru, what you endured, what you overcame. I look forward to your stories to teach me and show me a glimspe of the amazing woman that taught me it's ok to be me, by myself, to protect me, and to keep showing up because like the trees, I also can be a source of strength for others. We have 2 big trees - Maples. One in the front, one in the back. The one in front was the 1st one to turn, magnificent orange with its dark trunk, it was as if this Maple said, "I will light the way for you, this is your home. you are safe as I protect you. I would park my car under its branches for cool shade in the summer. One day I noticed there was not that much shade and looking up, the tree was dying. The arborist said it had strangled itself bc when planted,. they didn't cut the roots so it could grow wide beneath the ground. I was so suprised at how much grief comes from losing a tree. It changed everything. I pray to that tree and bless the one in its place, even tho it is so small;) Our tree in the back, whose mighty roots are breakin gthru the soil and Ryan wrestles with the roots, cutting the grass....has a huge split, right down the middle to the ground. I was given 2 choices, cut the entire thing or just the one branch which would most likely be so traumatic the entire thing may be gone by fall.....we will see. For now, it is still standing tall, wrestling with Ryan, gently teasing him....."I know I made your path bumpy, but you can do it, my boy. You are strong, you are taking care of us and in turn, I will take care of you."