Seeing Trees Through Poetry

I Reach My Arms Up to the Sky
A Tree Gives Shade
Ninety Year Old Apricot Trees
I Love the Brilliant Colors of Fall
A Tree Grows Straight
A Face in the Tree
Chainsaws Buzz
The Chinese Elms
Cottonwood Cotton Floats and Billows
White Petals
The Pines
The Lone Pine
Beauty in Death of a Tree

I reach my arms up to the sky
The tree's canopy is wide and high
I imagine monkeys and parrots too
Who would not understand the confines of a zoo
I dig my bare toes into the earth
While the tree's leaves rustle with mirth
Would that I could create sweet food from the sun
As does the anchored tree with cycles never done

A tree gives shade and beauty too
Whether palm, mangrove or elm
As habitat for bird and shrew
And clearing pollutants from the realm

For bearing fruits surrounding seeds
To replenish trees upon the land
And filling many other needs
From inland forest to edge of sand

Ninety year old apricot trees
With fruit for the birds and blooms for the bees
As you walk beneath, pay attention
A fruit may drop to relieve the tree's tension
Then gather the golden orbs to eat
Or put some by for a jam that's sweet

I love the brilliant colors of fall
Purples and oranges and yellows burst
From the green forest 'ere winter's pall
For eons this has been rehearsed
To vibrant colors and then to browns
Still somewhat supple and then dry
The winds will speed the leaves to ground
Aiding life's cycles they comply

A tree grows straight until it bends
Going sunwards its space defends
Most times the tree will end up straight
Sun's love is granted; a normal state

In a tree outside my window many years ago
A face appeared among the leaves till the wind would blow
The visage of the old man there was comforting somehow
For weeks he'd look upon me, a friend upon the bough

But as the summer ended and leaves fell to the ground
My wise and friendly leaf man was nowhere to be found
The next year as the buds expressed their greenness on the tree
The leaves were juxtaposed anew and him I did not see

Chainsaws buzz through storm debris
The detritus of many a tender tree
Just as leaves had dew's first blush
The heavy snow came down to crush

I pray that as the night goes dark
We are not met by an electric spark
From wires downed by broken limbs
The mixed messages of Nature's whims

The Chinese elms grow like weeds
The box elder maples have their bugs
Volunteers from bird dropped seeds
Many varied trees await your hugs

Click to Plant a Tree for Someone Special
And be good to the Earth too!

Cottonwood cotton floats and billows
In scattered vortices on the ground
As if someone attacked feather pillows
Feathers are flying without a sound

White petals, white petals from the crab apple tree
Will you make a tender snow in May just for me
Would you make me a carpet for barefooted pleasure
That I may romp upon measure for measure

To the left, to the right
The pines; the sovereign pines
Rise up from the earth to the light
In deepest darkest green painted lines

Rising off the plains unexpectedly
Surrounded by small horse farms
In the distance Pikes rises majestically
A perfect day; there are no clime alarms

Now scrub oak, creosote bushes appear
Amid the rolling grassy hills
Denver is far away yet very near
Here and there meandering bubbling rills

A scrawny pine lives alone
His brethren on a distant rocky crag
A way stop for the bird that's flown
A thousand miles a worm to snag

Through the dead tree's spires
The eastern sun is strong
I shield my eyes from the orb's fires
Else my vision will soon be gone

A perching tenement it is still
The avian lookouts have keen view
Of movement below to snag their fill
Branches yet support their ounces few

But see, a shock of green exists
To catch the warming western winds
So death this lonely branch resists
'Til Nature, this life-lease rescinds