Trees

by Shirley Bowling EGL 4

When I was a little girl, I used to look up at trees and think they were the closest things to heaven. I felt peaceful when I watched their branches blowing in the wind. And I delighted in watching the birds play tag as they darted in and out between the branches. In the summer the trees looked all dressed up with lots of leaves, gifting us with refreshing shade as we played outside all day every day. The trees provided us with a trunk that we could race around as we played tag, and a sturdy place to hide our eyes as we played hide and seek. Oh, how we loved our trees and the picnics that we enjoyed beneath their shady canopy. The sun inching through the leaves would leave a lacy look on our faces that made us giggle at our splotched patterns.

One of my teachers along the way introduced Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” to us and had us memorize it. How that poem deepened my love of trees! And when I became a teacher, I assigned it to my fourth grade students to memorize. After reciting it together and acting it out, most of my students said that they now looked at trees with new respect.

Recently there was an article in the newspaper about the value of trees in lifting our spirits and helping to reduce stress in our lives. When we look into the branches of a tree, something healing and soothing happens that provides beauty, tranquility, and stability in the midst of turmoil, confusion, and unrest.

I am sitting here watching a cardinal sway with the breeze as he sits on a thin wisp of a branch, in perfect trust, not worrying about falling off or where his next meal will come from. Now he and a little sparrow playfully skitter off to another branch.

Some years ago I read and re-read a delightful book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which really introduced me to the importance of a tree in a child’s life. We live on a street lined with trees fifty years old. I took them for granted until I started looking up into their branches and finding God in their serene beauty. Again, Joyce Kilmer’s poem came to mind. I see a prayer every time I look at the outspread, uplifted arms of God’s wondrous gift of nature to us. And recall the poem, “Trees:”

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

Who can improve on Joyce Kilmer’s prayerful reflection? Not I.