My Kitchen Tree & New Life

This is my kitchen tree - the tree that stands just off the deck, in front of the kitchen sink window - the tree that I look at more than any other tree in the world.  And I'm lucky, 'cause it's a really beautiful tree.  It had tiny little buds last week.  Yesterday it rained and today was sun and the buds are beginning to unfurl.

I am so amazed, every season, with this whole nature thing.  Every spring - EVERY SPRING, this happens.  These teeny little green buds unfurl into lacy red wings which become big healthy green leaves, then turn fiery scarlet, then fall off, sleep awhile, and start all over again.  It is just amazing.

In elementary school, we had a poet-in-residence named Michael Dennis Browne.  I don't remember if I loved literature before that; I think I did.  But I did learn to love poetry, at that time, from Mr. Browne.  In college, I was fortunate enough to have him as a poetry teacher.  It was the most inspiring writing instruction I've had and I remember two things so distinctly from that class.  One is that he told us he had once danced, at a party, with Sylvia Plath.  The other is this little poem of his that I often still think of:

Child's Elm Song

If there were no trees

I would take my turn

And stand in the street in spring

With arms wide open

In case there were birds

Who needed a place to sing.

                                  -Michael Dennis Browne

So after all the guests had been fed, eggs had been found (even the golden egg, albeit tears among a few not lucky enough to have found it), and goodbyes said...I sat, with a glass of wine, on the deck and looked at my kitchen tree.

Indira Ghandi once said, "You must learn to be still in the midst of activity - and to be vibrantly alive in repose."

Me and my tree - we've got that covered.

Happy Easter.