MEMORY OF TREES (Remembered 12.09.13)

You are the purple shade of night,

You are my shade from noonday light.

You bring perspective in to line,

You shape horizons quite sublime.

I hear you whisper in the breeze,

I hear the whispers in your leaves,

Which can be sharp, they can be soft.

You are minute, you are aloft.

Your lofty boughs reach to the sky,

Your bowers weep and seem to cry.

Your leaves will muffle din and noise,

Your leaves will baffle prying eyes.

Your flowing sap brings sweet molasses.

Ancient sap brings amber, for the masses

To see entrapped the insects, which were unable

To escape th’ entangling, flowing, liquid, able

To pour like liquid gold,

From within the denizens of forests old.

Your colours are a palette in themselves,

And likely painted by the devic elves

Or nature sprites, who work in ceaseless synergy,

To bring you love and God’s life giving energy.

And in return you are the host to legions,

Whom you allow to live within your lofty regions.

There is a home in every crevice, crease and crack

For spider, ant, insect rare or simple beetle black.

Your oil is used to blend our paint,

Another brings relief to those in pain.

And yet another lets us right a written wrong,

Or to expand and stretch both wide and long.

Your powers to heal were legendary,

Though lost in time are not imaginary.

You can align displaced bone, distorted spine,

You can restore the breath, you are benign.

And in attuned and meditative space

You can bring healing to the human race.

You are without denomination

And yet your beauty is admired by all religion.

You serve the rich and poor alike,

A gilded casket or a timber trike.

For kings a cabinet or tallboy,

Or just a wooden spoon for a poor boy.

There is a magic that you bring, a light that shines innate

In grain that man has tried, in vain, to emulate.

A grain that shows in many colours, tones and shades,

And even when the colour gently fades,

The beauty is again enhanced

And we all stand entranced,

As with a kind and careful c’ress of palm

Your beauty shines again like soothing balm.

Ent you may be, but when all is said and done

And you have seemingly passed and gone.

There is a little of you left behind,

Here and there, which I can find

To light a fire and bring good cheer,

To banish dark and vanquish fear.

And as I stare into the embers,

The vision comes and mind remembers

The memory of trees.

David B Tenneson  –  May 1997

 

 

 

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