The Poplar Tree

The Poplar Tree

Gusts of wind are scuffling in the top of the tulip poplar. Broad leaves lift and wave and settle again. It is a green flame, licking the whipping cream of clouds at dusk.

This tree has grown tall from a cleft of hills between loose rows of houses. In a whorl of arms vaulting star-ward, from a net of roots sinking ground-ward, the poplar holds fast to what it needs from both earth and sky. It rises above a creekbed’s dark seam, and its children arc, light and lithe, all around.

Small birds leap and tumble through limbs and twigs, and squirrels coil quick as lightning up the trunk. The poplar stands quiet when deer step softly under low branches, or when the owl settles there at early dawn, or when rain slips down its body in clear rivulets.

From season to season, rings of want or plenty circle round its heartwood, tracing the orbit of the years, an enfleshing of abundance and loss. It is always welling with, and always letting go of, its own waking life.

Watch this tree. Watch it like you would a loved face. See how an evening storm will move it, how it leans, how it shines, and how even the coming of winter will render it more beautiful. Learn to live like this, on the thin rim of the rolling earth, with such intimacy, such reciprocity.

~

From The Open Gate: New & Selected Poems by Emily Hancock (St Brigid Press, 2017).