A Pearlescent Morning Among the Neighborhood Trees
A Poem and some photos of the beloved trees I speak to on my morning rambles.
Joyce Kilmer wrote, “I think I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree” in her famous poem, Trees. Today, I would not presume to write a poem as beautiful as hers, but I am grateful for trees, the original colonizers of the earth, the shelterers and sustainers of life (we could not breathe without trees), the communicators underground, the ones who feed their brothers and sisters sugar at the roots when they are ill.
So often, we are in our cars, flashing by, shielded by metal walls from those living their lives at the edge of our roads, or where we consent to put them. They quietly go about their daily activities, right before us, calling us to their unspeakable glory, but sometimes we fail to notice.
We don’t think of them waking and sleeping, and yet, they do, shrinking inches at night, perking up in the morning.
One day when I was walking down my steps, I congratulated myself for my lovely peach and plum trees blooming beside the front door. I said to myself, “Look what I have done, what I have created.” And it was as though the tree spoke back to me. It said, “Who is to say that we did not call to you to care for us?” And of course, I did not create anything. I only brought these trees to my land where the gardener planted them, and I watered and fed them. They are the ones who draw the bees to them by sending out scent and giving nectar and caffeine. They are the ones who bloom, produce fruit, put out fresh leaves in spring and drop them in autumn. They are the ones who cleanse the air for us, who pump thousands of gallons of water up through their trunks daily and bring cooler temperatures for us to enjoy.
And in their branches, the little birds, the little birds with red in their wings, play and hide among the crimson blooms of the pomegranate. These tiny birds call to me with a trill in their song as I walk by.
How interconnected we all are!
Often, in my daily walk, I visit a vibrant and suffering pepper tree, talk to it, see how it is doing. To alleviate its pain would be to tear it down, and yet it grows among us, thriving, waving in the wind, and giving fruit. Honestly, I’m a bit too scared to try its pepper berries, but red peppercorns adorned my mocktail the other night!
This morning, a woodpecker wanted me to know that he was up in my pepper tree, eating insects, and I am happy for him and happy for the tree.
Below is a poem of mine that was first published in the San Diego Poetry Annual: Greetings from Tent City, 2023-24.
A Pearlescent Morning
I turn the corner of Barking Dog Street
where Shiloh the wheaten has faced
his fears to find a scene Thomas Cole
would not despise.
A marine layer masks low hills,
promises westward ocean beyond,
black olives, pines and palms line
a meandering stream of road,
cattle replaced by Dodge Caravans,
boulders by bold garbage cans
placed out overnight.
Is this the peace of western
wilderness, Thomas? From sea
to shining sea, all filled in?
Still – still, the trees frame all –
the street a shining silvery ribbon,
the distance a mist of now,
tomorrow, possibility.
I pass beneath the towering pine
at the intersection of Fire and Stone,
history and Acjachemen, gone.
A century young, its twisting trunks
call out the change it has seen,
the bending to weather, phone
lines. It drops its male and female
cones Into the future, into hope,
where they clutter the pavement,
crushed to powder by passing cars.
©Janell Strube
I love trees too. Thank you for sharing your favorite ones.
just so happy to read your post.