Monday, January 16, 2012

Breaking Bark


Long legs waving back and forth,

I have, at last, found a tailor-made perch to sit and wonder.

The smell of brown bark, nearby pine and some still damp earth

are the scents that I smell, here.

And it is my resting place.

At 50 (now) when I spy a tree limb--strong, and sufficiently horizontal;

close to the ground, my mind goes back to this--the sacred spot,

in the low lying tree just two houses down from my safe, yellow, front-porched Milwaukee bungalow.

In this—my tree limb resting place, I am invisible. I am surely, of the divine. And I am more than a front porch traveler and bigger than a child.

I would sit here…and quietly (and privately) allow my own mind to wander and my own thoughts to spread out some, a bit. In this, my protected and much coveted place, I was allowing my mind to grow. Did the tree know this? Did it feel my groaning, too?

They say that when a tree grows it breaks its bark. Perhaps I too, was breaking my bark.

What better place to do this, than in a tree?

Maybe it was just idle time, but in this, the resting place--

to me, a girl of just eight, or nine and ten, it was legs dangling, arms holding, hair blowing, sunlight dancing, breeze playing, leaf wiggling, one leg flopping…bird singing me-time.

(My mother would say that as a somewhat self-centered, first-born child--I have, perhaps, always been good at this.) And I smile.

But I have found it useful still, to preserve, to hold fast to, and to cultivate my own playful, watchful, solitary, just-for-art eye. For, the more that I look, the more I see, in the splendid world of solitude.

My world is (much) bigger now, but long for-I do, the tree,

and (perhaps) my childhood innocence…

but more than this—

the supreme sense of wonder that it held.

I might add that--

as a still wandering and now-fully-grow’d-up young women,

I am perpetually lingering and in a semi-permanent state

of watchfulness for it.

Or is it that we, each, try…to go back home?

…Me to my tree, and you, to your river.



4 comments:

  1. I have always liked solitude, too, - although sometimes I get too much of it. (And I am a middle child.) Your tree makes me think of the huge oak tree that I used to climb at my grandmother's house. I would sit and watch the world go by, unobserved.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "I would sit and watch the world go by, unobserved." I like that, Lynn.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This takes me back to places I wandered in and to in my childhood that were almost sacred though I don't think I thought of them that way at the time. Just beautiful, lg.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Talon! So glad that you stopped by! I think the sacred places and state of mind that you found as a girl helped shaped your beautiful and watchful eye. I wrote this piece as an exercise for a poetry group that I attend (it was 'themed.') Wish you (and Lynn) could attend with me! We meet at our local library!
    lg

    ReplyDelete

Please do...tell.

Lois Nancy

This artwork is my mother's. It touches my heart.    (So gentle.)   A thoughtful depiction of something sweet, tiny, and cute.   'Wa...