Willow

Imposition of Immortality

(x = space)

Imposition of Immortality

The tree outside looked as if it were leaning toward the window. I mean big parts, think branches and the bow. Black against a gray sky, it all looked dramatic. Worse, a little scary. Trees have fallen down before. In the back, a large one, bringing many wires with it. In the backyard of the house I grew up in in Pittsburgh, a tall and wide willow. Fell in the night, covering the backyard to be seen in the daylight. The first big thing to fall in my nascent awareness. Will the new tree fall? I don’t know. Who does? The squirrels and dogs walked by? Qué será, será, the Spanish say (and Doris Day). It is what it is, we say these days. All we are is dust in the wind. I guess that goes for imposing trees as well.

C L Couch

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

By William Wordsworth

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45536/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollections-of-early-childhood

Photo by Diane Helentjaris on Unsplash

Purcellville, Virginia

Old carved tombstone of a weeping willow tree in a cemetery in the countryside near Purcellville, Virginia in Loudoun County. The cemetery was integrated with the graves of African American and white Americans as was the nearby church.

November 17, 2020 0

Trees

Trees

(for an October prompt)

Tolkien liked trees

Robin Hood, too;

Tinkerbell and Tiger Lily,

I imagine,

Providing shelter

And playing fields

For lost boys

I like trees

Two of these peaked

High like towers from

The wide suburban plain

Of the backyard,

Splindly reaching toward

A clouded sky on

A Pittsburgh summer day

There was wind

At night, and upon the

Morning in the yard

One tree had fallen

Large across the lawn,

Tall on the ground

Sibling standing over

As if to demonstrate their

Name,

Weeping willow

For many days

I had climbed into the

Guard now dying,

Onto a lumbered platform

That my father built

That lay square among

Round branches

Inside uprooted, plodding

Blocks

Of grass

First time for me

With something monstrous

So close, so wrong

C L Couch

October 21, 2016 9

Willow, on Three Legs

Willow, on Three Legs

Willow, on three legs—
A wolf, one leg ruined
In a trap

Willow protected now
In sanctuary

We had a feline with
Three legs, one leg
Caught in a trap

She was purebred,
And the vet reasoned
That, once marred in
The trap, the cat
Could not be shown
For ribbons and so
Was discarded

My sister gave the
Siamese an exotic
Name, Scheherazade
(“Shahrazad,” the teller
Of one thousand plus
One tales, the tyrant’s
Wife who lives), and
For seventeen years
We lived with her

She was a gentle cat
Except for one trait:
She was the best
Birder in the cat pride
We kept then

Tragedy turned cat-
Happy life (well, not
So much for certain
Birds): Well done!

Well told,
Scheherazade

May Willow live as
Happily and as whole

(Willow introduced
To me, as with so
Many things, on PBS)

February 1, 2016 2