The Family Tree

Photo by benotforgot

The late novelist Michael Crichton is reported to have said, “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”

Huckleberries and Hornets

Every child should have . . . 

 

mud pies, 

grasshoppers, 

water bugs, 

tadpoles, 

frogs, 

mud turtles, 

elderberries, 

wild strawberries, 

acorns, 

chestnuts, 

trees to climb. 

Brooks to wade, 

water lilies, 

woodchucks, 

bats, 

bees, 

butterflies, 

various animals to pet, 

hayfields, 

pine-cones, 

rocks to roll, 

sand, 

snakes, 

huckleberries and hornets; 

and any child 

who has been deprived of these 

has been deprived 

of the best part of education.

 

Luther Burbank*
07 March 1849 – 11 April 1926

*This quote is posted in memory of Luther Burbank who is a 5th cousin six times removed to the Keeper of this blog. He died 90 years ago today.

Why Me?

Why me?

This is a tedious task,

much work.

Not a great tree,

my family,

Not any kind of tree,

A spindly twig....

A stunted sapling

of little importance,

No forest giant we.

A pause

Ethereal whispers

persuasive

soft

and still . . .

"Daughter,

if you don't remember us,

Who will?"

Dot Stutter

Victoria, BC. Canada

1996

The River Note

And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,--
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father's fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves.
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,
Much triumphing,--and these the fields
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly,
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And hark! where overhead the ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the sky:--
These are the same, but I am not the same,
But wiser than I was, and wise enough
Not to regret the changes, tho' they cost
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;
These trees and stones are audible to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance. The wind,
That rustles down the well-known forest road--
It hath a sound more eloquent than speech.
The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind,
All of them utter sounds of 'monishment
And grave parental love.
They are not of our race, they seem to say,
And yet have knowledge of our moral race,
And somewhat of majestic sympathy,
Something of pity for the puny clay,
That holds and boasts the immeasurable mind.
I feel as I were welcome to these trees
After long months of weary wandering,
Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;
They know me as their son, for side by side,
They were coeval with my ancestors,
Adorned with them my country's primitive times,
And soon may give my dust their funeral shade.


Ralph Waldo Emerson
25 May 1803 - 27 April 1882

The big oak trees

So they all went away from the little log house. The shutters were over the windows, so the little house could not see them go. It stayed there inside the log fence, behind the two big oak trees that in the summertime had made green roofs for Mary and Laura to play under. And that was the last of the little house.

from
Little House on the Prairie
by
Laura Ingalls Wilder
07 February 1867 - 10 February 1957

Until I see you again

I read a note my grandma wrote back in nineteen twenty-three.
Grandpa kept it in his coat, and he showed it once to me. He said,
"Boy, you might not understand, but a long, long time ago,
Grandma's daddy didn't like me none, but I loved your Grandma so."

We had this crazy plan to meet and run away together.
Get married in the first town we came to, and live forever.
But nailed to the tree where we were supposed to meet, instead
Of her, I found this letter, and this is what it said:

If you get there before I do, don't give up on me.
I'll meet you when my chores are through;
I don't know how long I'll be.
But I'm not gonna let you down, darling wait and see.
And between now and then, till I see you again,
I'll be loving you. Love, me.

I read those words just hours before my Grandma passed away,
In the doorway of a church where me and Grandpa stopped to pray.
I know I'd never seen him cry in all my fifteen years;
But as he said these words to her, his eyes filled up with tears.

If you get there before I do, don't give up on me.
I'll meet you when my chores are through;
I don't know how long I'll be.
But I'm not gonna let you down, darling wait and see.
And between now and then, till I see you again,
I'll be loving you. Love, me.
Between now and then, till I see you again,
I'll be loving you. Love, me.

Performed by Collin Raye

Written
by
Skip Ewing & Max T. Barnes

The blue dream of sky

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

e. e. cummings
b. 14 Oct 1894
d. 03 Sept 1962