I do not recall precisely the
season nor the occasion,
only that the blue spruce sapling
of unknown origin
in my friend Judy’s yard
had to go,
and she could not bring herself
to mow it down.
My
phone rang. Might I, on my
hundred acres,
spare an ittsy-bittsy space for
one refugee conifer?
Her impassioned plea stirred
me.
I imagined its spindly limbs
seeking my embrace
like the emaciated arms of a
love-starved child,
its dusty, orange-rooted bottom
swaddled in tattered burlap,
its dewy leaves imploring me
to adopt it.
How could I—who called
myself her friend—
deny such a noble and worthy
request?
Yet
suspicious of the sapling
as I remain suspicious of all
things small
that possess an infinite propensity
for growth,
I granted it a remote corner
of my yard,
open to rain and soft morning
sun,
yet spared afternoon’s
glare,
by an ancient and benevolent
oak
that would provide shelter and
companionship.
And
so it was there we planted
it,
Judy soiled, sweaty, and satisfied
with her work, for she had brought
together
plant, earth, and man
in the most sacred communion.
And it was good.
It
was good, too, we could not
know then
of the frosty cancer that would
claim her,
of the suffering, the sorrow,
the end of tomorrow,
her autumn, her winter, her eventual
entry
into the soil from which all
life emerges.
Sometimes
of an evening now,
in the left-behind light from
the vanished sun,
when tree frogs chirp and cicadas
hum,
I turn to the sapling as if all
that’s been done
might be undone and done again,
next time with a happier ending.
But
nature reminds me of my fallacy.
What once we overshadowed soon
overshadows us.
For the sapling’s no longer
a sapling, but a tree,
bearing cones, already grown
a dozen feet high, at least that
wide,
with a voice of its own when
the wind moves it to speak,
and I its humble interpreter.
Few
things are more mystical than
wind in pines,
pitched, I suppose, to all states
of mind.
Sometimes it sighs, sometimes
it cries,
and sometimes I am certain it
whispers goodbye,
its waving boughs a living monument,
filling a hole in the sky.
--Bill Church, Instructor of
English
On the occasion of Dr. Judy Martin's
memorial service
