A humble sapling, spry and meek
At the crest of the hill had sprouted
Against the wall of our crumbling barn
Where my father’s instructions were flouted.
Barely waist high in my fourteenth year
That little tree could measure
And in mercy I left it to grow as it would
And to watch me whack weeds at its leisure
Seasons would pass since that boyish reprieve
Until three times my height she would tower
With her branches all bent to the path of the light
Keeping pebbles and glass in her bower.
An alder is able to grow in bad soil
To enrich for the beings that come later
A kin-soul to earthworms, a shepherd of moss
And the grove’s early, gentle curator
So, I stand melancholic observing this space
Where a friend and a living thing stood
Her bark is all fallen and mottled with holes
Where some insect has bored through her wood.
No catkins on branches, all crackling and dry
Not a bud for this seventeenth spring
Yet above in the canopy, perching on high
A robin still settles to sing.
My tree needs no tombstone,
Nor tearful good-bye.
She becomes her own monument
Brushing the sky.
April 14th, 2020
Hermit Thrush 