Ode on a Backyard Tree

From one of our community poets. Published in For Every Tatter, by Christine H. Boldt. Lamar University Press, 2021.

I once read the "Ode on a Grecian Urn,"

standing on a path beside a live oak tree.

Then, stepping closer through the spongy earth,

I read again--my hand touching her brittle bark.

I chose this poem for its remembered reference

to eternal boughs whose leaves could not be shed.

I thought to celebrate her permanence,

for I had watched her, steadfast through mad gales,

much like the ones that hurled my life about,

and I had been emboldened to persist

by knowing that her roots did not let go.

Yet as I read the first time, I glanced up

and noticed how her rugged limbs were thrashing,

on that bright but blustery day,

how her branches declined to leafy fringe,

whose turn to sepia from green had just begun.

And when I read the second time, I felt

the brede of mossy plants across her bark.

She was not immune to time as were those boughs

carved in marble that Keats immortalized.

Though near-eternal from my curtailed view,

each year she released wearied leaves,

dropped new catkins to stain the graveled walks,

offered nesting for a different clutch of squirrels,

rained a fresh crop of acorns on my roof.

Even the sunlight that fell upon the text

of the poem I read for her was filtered

by the dynamics of her shifting leaves,

modulated by the November breeze.

And setting poets' whims aside, I saw

that she was snared in time as much as I,

and that her staunch demeanor offered me

consolation, only because I knew,

one day, she, too, would be uprooted, overthrown.

The breeze toyed with her branches, yet again.

Her wind chime throbbed, a solitary note.