free verse

Many readers here will remember the story of Lily, the hummingbird who built a nest in my backyard this past spring and set me off on a new life journey with my camera. I wrote some poetry about her at the time but then, after the tragedy with her eggs, I found it hard to go back and revisit the story. Now enough time has passed and enough new hummingbirds have crossed my path that I feel I can begin to try and capture more of that wonderful experience in word to accompany the many photographs.

Today’s poem actually had its beginning back in April when I was doing Kick the Poetry Can’ts for National Poetry Month. You can read the first draft which had its beginning in a poetry exercise that eventually led me to this poem, Learning to See.

LEARNING TO SEE

Outside my office door
an aging Japanese maple begins the garden
her dress trimmed in deep green
lady ferns and soft baby tears
edged with purple violets,
yellow-eyed grass
a wetlands wonderland bordered
by bubbling water rocks.

Beyond the maple tree
a toyon waits to grow.

On stormy days its stick-arms
bend, break, then bend again
like a skeleton
shadow dancing  against the fence.

Within the bush
(no tree itself, at least not yet)
branches zig zag toward the sun
a modern highway for ants and aphids
a picnic place for spiders
a sunny spot for birds to perch, to preen
after a midday bath.

Along the branch
dark green leaves cluster like a fan
protect the jewel nestled
oh so carefully
in the vee that meets the trunk
hiding a secret I could not find
without the help of a friend.

Behind all the leaves
there sits a tiny nest
woven with bits of spider webs
scraps of dryer lint
white downy feathers
a so-soft bed newly made
waiting to hold the tiny eggs
from the tiny dancer.

Now I understand
all those days
the dog refused to budge
from her post on the path
all those days she watched
the coming and going
of the ambitious architect
all those days she knew
something magical was happening
right before our eyes
when all I saw was her stubbornness
that made her refuse to come
when I called her name.

–Susan Taylor Brown, all rights reserved

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater has the whole great big Poetry Friday roundup today at The Poem Farm.

Also a reminder that over in my Etsy shop, Poppiness,  (which has hummingbird calendars, prints, notecards and more) you can get a 10% discount on everything in the entire shop today just because you are a supporter of Poetry Friday.  Just be sure to use the coupon code PF2012at checkout.

I know that many people are posting holiday poems because, heck, we are knee deep in the midst of the holiday whether we want it or not. But not me. I have to say goodbye to an old friend. When we decided to rent this house a few years ago we looked at the inside, the bedrooms, the kitchen, the coveted two bathrooms after way too many years of just one. But the Pepper tree in the front yard called to us more than almost anything on the inside. They speak of houses that have character but here it was the tree that had so many stories to tell. Stories I wished to learn.

A few months ago a big chunk of the tree cracked and fell, slowly and ever so carefully, across the front yard and into the neighbor’s. No one was hurt and no houses were damaged. Several inspections later and it was official: the tree was dying. It had barely held on to the branches that fell and more was likely to fall at any time. The tree was home to an enormous hive of bees (see this previous post http://susanwrites.livejournal.com/47675.html) and when it cracked, the bees were suddenly homeless. It took some convincing on my part to save the bees (rather than having them just killed) but after 3 trips, they were mostly all moved to a new hive. But this week, after a city hearing and permits and appeals, the tree was brought down before it could fall and cause damage. Wednesday the tree men worked all day to chop it up, pausing as they woke the opposums who ran off to hopefully find new homes. There was a ten foot hole straight down into the ground, wide enough for all to see how rotten it was, but still, watching that old tree come down was hard. Today they worked for hours to grind the stump. All that is left now is mound of sawdust waiting for something new.

I give you a quick poem on my thoughts.

THE TREE THAT USED TO BE

There used to be a treee
standing guard
100 years more
in the midst of Silicon Valley orchards
before the Silicon Valley ever existed.
Bark of varying shades of gray and black and flecks of white
leaves drifting to the ground
all year
and shade
oh so welcome shade
come summer months
we sang its praise.

There used to be a tree
in a neighborhood of homes
to children playing hide and go seek
calling “Olly Olly Oxen Free”
racing to touch base
before being named “it”.
Roots raised the ground
to a hill of tangleness
where nothing grew
but ice plant
and the occasional wildflower that found the sun.

There used to be a tree
home to roof rats
(that we battled)
and squirrels
(that the dog chased)
and a family of opossums
(that often made us smile.)
House numbers were rarely needed
because the pizza man
and so many others
knew the tree
long before we called
this house home.

But sickness comes
to people and to trees
and slowly
from the inside out
the tree began to die.

One hundred and three years is more
than I can expect
to live
yet there used to be a tree
that lived that long
just.

What stories it could tell
this tree
that used to be.