« March 2020 | Main | May 2020 »
Risen from half frozen muck,
peepers give voice to awakening soil,
chanting a sharp, piping whistle.
I hear a thousand sleigh bells
or an invasion of spectral creatures,
but frogs sing loudly and fast only to mate.
Tiny carolers bearing dark crosses
on their backs, they remain invisible
but for sound, but for faith.
The pulsing chorus is my creed, a promise
kept yearly by this worshiping choir,
a shrill, clear call of hope.
A giant has fallen. Rising skyward almost 100 feet, the horse chestnut tree that stood behind, and towered above the building across the street from my home was recently reduced to sawdust, chips, and logs in just a few hours. Plagued by rot and insects, it was sad but necessary work. Months have passed, but sometimes as I look out my window, I briefly see a shadow or penumbra of the big tree. Memory teases eyesight and something within me wants to put it back where it once was. When you spend most of your life looking daily at a thing of such beauty and grandeur, even its absence becomes a kind of presence.
Across the street from town hall in Collinsville, Connecticut, the tree was crowded by buildings, and had pavement to within inches of its trunk. It was a survivor. Rot and marks left by chainsaws made it impossible to count rings on the stump, but looking at a turn-of-the-twentieth-century photograph with the tree alongside a building, and estimating how quickly a young horse chestnut would grow, I guessed that the tree was around 130 years old.
