Pantoum #137
Stormfruit blossom in the wreck of damage
A surprise when I needed the eager green of promise
On a crabby walk to survey deadfall after the winds
A rewilding of volunteer apple trees greet me
A surprise when I needed the eager green of promise
Blooming in the space between dead widowmakers
A rewilding of volunteer apple trees greet me
Future shade-makers raise backlit blooms toasting the shrinking canopy
Blooming in the spaces between dead widowmaking arms
On a crabby walk to survey deadfall after the winds
Future shade-makers raise backlit blooms toasting the shrinking canopy
Stormfruit blossom in the wreck of damage
I’ve left a wayward crab tree growing at the edge of my driveway. No doubt, a core dropped by some drunken coyote leaving an all-night party in my backyard. But that’s a story for another day.
This week, something remarkable happened. I returned to my woods in the wake of weeks of strong winds. I had lost fourteen huge, old-growth poplars this month. Each fall created a deeper bereavement for my disappearing forest.
Yesterday I put a new chain on my chainsaw. The old one had been eaten by a stubborn poplar. The woodpecker tree bit back. While I was sawing, it clamped down with spinning teeth and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t dislodge it. That tree held the chain like a message. Clearly its bite was worse than its bark.
Today I returned with a new blade and cut it loose. But now I don’t want to remove the old chain. I kind of want it there—as a talisman of trust, that log complete with chain in its teeth, its bark guarding the entrance to a new path. A path between the space of known and unknown.
It blows my mind to realize this: while I’ve been mourning the death of my forest—the fallen trees over the past five or six years—the land has been secretly reincarnating into an apple orchard.
I’m drunk on the cider of this metaphor.
This morning, the count of blooming trees in my forest was 22 white crabs, to 6 pink Thunderchilds (or, is that Thunderchildren?) ;)
While my friends are planting lettuce, tomatoes, basil, begonias and impatiens, I’m tending a different kind of garden. One of adventure. One that stirs my soul without asking me to leave my property. Like naming a baby, I’m throwing around names of my trails: Widowmaker. Chainsaw Chomper. Apple Orchard of the Unseen.
My inner Johnny Appleseed is chomping at the bit.
I remember hearing someone say, “When is the best time to plant a tree? Ten years ago. When is the second-best time? Now.”
Turns out, I’m already ahead in this tree-planting lottery. New spruce trees are popping up everywhere—ten for every poplar I’ve lost. The once-new forest that replaced my long-forgotten garden twenty years ago is becoming the next old growth.
I stack more logs along the path. Another thing on the to-do list - getting them to the woodpile, ready to split. What a process.
There’s something comforting about walking past those piles of now stovelength poplars in the woods.
A reminder of intention.
Of hard, worthwhile work. Work that will warm me, later.
What have I left behind? Numerous, stacked and ready piles, some already forgotten.
Years ago I made a quilt called In Whose Woods These Are.
A reminder of Frost-like moments, placeholders of noticing.
Invitation:
What is your stormfruit?
What loss or upheaval in your life has quietly rooted into something beautiful, surprising, or nourishing? This piece is for those who’ve lived the storm—and are just beginning to notice what’s blooming in its wake.
See you soon for #138,
P.S. If you want to browse through some of my writings visit The Pantoumery. What’s a pantoum, you say? I’m writing one each day, for a year. Learn how HERE
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