Oak Tree with a Cloverleaf
…
You might remember a tree
Loved in days more worry free
Where climbing was a little work
To sit on branch of scratchy bark
…
Or lean for hours in summer shade
Writing your first one act play
Of branching arms and trunk alive
Leaves fluttering against the sky
…
My family’s land, it had a tree
Til freeway cut the property
Estranging that oak
Like a castle’s moat
…
Now, middle of a cloverleaf
It stately stands, holding memories
Not the drivers by, but the girl in me
Who left my heart up in that tree
…
~Julie Robinson
Good they didn’t cut it down. My dad tells the story again and again of the property his parents owned. If I’m ever out riding with him I let him repeat the story of the tree. I’m glad for #Octpowrimo because I look around each day for a poem. Today we went out to bring home cheeseburgers and drove around that cloverleaf and I just knew I wanted to encapsulate the feeling.
I wonder if poets and trees are a matched set? I have memories of oaks also. Both my grandparents and my parents used them as the “posts” to run laundry lines from. So many days playing under the trees and so many nights listening to them. So happy the tree still stands 🙂
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One of my favorite poems… Trees by Joyce Kilmer. They are poetry. And they do talk don’t they? And one of my fave books read to my children was The Giving Tree. Cried first time I read it to them and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with mom. Sweet sweet story.
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