The Reward of its Waiting

Janine and I have been participating in a virtual version of the Camino de Santiago, walking every day in the woods. I’ve grown in my appreciation of our symbiotic relationship with trees and plants. It reminded me of a poem I wrote for Janine on our 25th. She has a long love of trees and had studied one tree for years, then painted it (pictured below). She gave me the painting for our 25th and I gave her this poem

Near the edge of a lake, a cluster of trees were cleared for the crop of a pioneer family

But in the middle of the first season’s harvest a solitary sapling sprouted from a stray seed

Standing in the center of a row of corn like an adopted child

Over the years the tree grew up as a pillar of wood and leaf

The crops changed like songs, and all the while the tree waited patiently

Clutching the earth in its reassuring grip and listening to the music of time

During depressions and recessions and World Wars the tree presided over the anxiety of humanity

As a prophetic reminder that Winter gives way to Spring

Testifying to the strength of silent waiting

Eventually a park grew up around the unhurried tree, and from its topmost branches

It witnessed the coming and going of buildings and machines and people

All the while its quite strength expecting … waiting.

A path was laid next to it and people ran past on their way to nowhere in particular

Children rode their bikes under its shade

And people leaned against it to rest from the dizzying circles in which they ran

Over many years the tree bore witness to things beautiful and sorrowful

Love awakened under its spreading beauty and others sat alone beside it and wept

beneath the crushing weight of wounds born of hatred or of love

Once it nearly caught fire and twice it endured grave illness

But sill it waited and watched with equanimity the coming and going

Of danger and peace, love and loss, life and death

Then one day a woman came and looked at it – really looked at it

And she saw the beauty that had been missed by others in their hurry

And she touched the perseverance in the deep, irregular grooves of the bark

 She came every day to drink in the look of the tree

In each season and in many kinds of weather she noticed

The color and the texture and the character of the patient tree

Finally, when she had studied the tree for a dozen years

And had memorized the contour of its regal frame

She painted it

And in this one act of love

After 100 years

The tree received

The reward of its waiting