Stoic Oak
You used to play among the branches
Swings and summer dances
Climbing and taking chances
A youth's endless romances
From girl to woman it watched you grow
Imperceptibly changing
It let you go.
Even though
You go
It carries on in it's place
While you run life's race
Through storms and din
It makes a playground for your kin
When visits are made over the years
It never questions your tears
When memories well up inside
Of how you used to hide
In spreading arms open wide
It bathes in moss
Never weary from loss
Continuing to grow strong
Even after you are gone.
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This week's poem prompt from Blockchain Poets is "Leaving Home".. While this immediately made me think of a Beatles song, I decided it was of course best not to plagiarize.
Instead I used a recent photo as inspiration. My mother grew up playing in this tree, we have photos of her even as a young adult swinging from it, so it means a lot to me. It probably helps that in a former life I was a forester so I have an appreciation for trees to begin with.
I had a big tree in my front yard as a child too, and it "watched" me grow from a small boy barely able to get a few rungs into it to a crazy teenager hell bent on climbing to the very tip top. How many trees are witnesses to the growing pains of children growing up and leaving home? They outlive us, and if they could speak I'm sure they would have stories of generations of kids skinning knees or breaking bones in their branches.
Do you have a favorite tree from your childhood?
Camera:Yashica Mat
Film:Ilford HP5 400 ISO
Developed in Caffenol as always.
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I did have a favorite tree growing up. It had a long, thick branch that bent down very low toward the ground so that anybody could easily climb up onto it. Me and a few other kids in the neighborhood used to stand on the lower branch and bounce up and down while holding onto a higher branch. We did this every day for years.
Sometimes we would practice walking up the slope of this branch into the center of the tree itself. It was so much fun.
When I returned to this town last summer with my kids, I had hoped to show them this tree but, unfortunately, at some point, it had been cut down.
That's sad to hear. My cousins and I had a massive juniper that we used to play on every summer at my grandmother's house. I went back there a few years ago and it was completely gone. I didn't even recognize the house! I suppose all good things must end, at least they live on in our memories.
It is sad, isn’t it. You expect the houses to change, but losing the trees is somehow more disappointing. Wouldn’t it be great to back and see the tree bigger than you remember standing over or behind a new house, completely appreciated and incorporated into the design of the new property layout?