Grandmother Oak

 

Autumn Haibun

 

Neighbors

 

Leaves

 

Shade

 

Nothing Red Can Stay

 

Redbuds

 

Tree Bones

 

Crowd

 

Folktale Week: Tree

 

Peak Colors

 

Loveliest of Trees

 

Yesterday, my poem witnessed the insect apocalypse. Today, a different kind of witnessing. The kind that gives me hope: Spring is returning, and the redbuds are in bloom. 

I distinctly remember the first time I saw a redbud blooming. I was walking across the OSU campus after a spring rain. At first, I was amazed to hear the sound of water being sucked into the ground! But then a small tree near the sidewalk caught my eye and I could NOT believe what I saw -- there were blooms coming right out of the bark on the branches! In that moment, redbuds became my favorite spring tree. 

A.E. Houseman's Loveliest of Trees is one of my favorite spring poems. I have it memorized, and I recite it every spring to remind myself to witness this season of rebirth as if it might be the last one I ever see.

"...loving this vanishing world feels like a kind of prayer sometimes." p.263-264 in ALL WE CAN SAVE

Daily Alchemy

 

DAILY ALCHEMY

Out and in trees silently breathe,
turning carbon into life:
a living clean-air factory.
Out and in trees silently breathe.
This spring we’re planting, saying please
help us, Trees, while there’s still time.
Out and in trees silently breathe
turning carbon into life.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

Today's poem is dedicated to Friends of the Lower Olentangy (FLOW), who are sponsoring tree planting and invasive species removal projects weekly throughout the month of April in the Olentangy River watershed, and to the Ohio River Foundation, who does the same work on a larger scale for the Ohio River watershed.

Trees give me hope. They have so much to teach us about collaboration, if only we would listen.

"If humans are to help reverse global warming, we will need to step into the flow of the carbon cycle in new ways, stopping our excessive exhale of carbon dioxide and encouraging the winded ecosystems of the planet to take a good long inhale as they heal. It will mean learning to help the helpers, those microbes, plants, and animals that do the daily alchemy of turning carbon into life." p. 13 ALL WE CAN SAVE (with borrowed phrases in bold)

"The winded ecosystems of the planet..." Don't you love that?