The look of trees in Winter I miss.
I think that’s the first line of a poem I will soon be working into something resembling the stark reality of trees in Winter.
This is something I have missed since moving to California. Here, during the winter the trees either never shed their leaves or hang onto them until the new leaves begin replacing the old. There are few trees that reflect to cold bareness of November, December, January and February – four months that many people, especially as they get older and find fewer things they enjoy doing (skiing, snowmobiling, snowball fights, making snowmen or snow angels, ice fishing, sliding sideways down a highway) think of as dreary and painful.
Trees in the Autumn changing color as they begin their plunge to the ground are the most memorable for many people. Others enjoy the full greenness and shade of a tree on a hot summer day. Still, there are those who thrill at the first signs of Spring when a tree buds and sends out the shoots it will use to form new branches during its next growth cycle.
The look of trees in Winter I miss.
During winter I have seen trees that look to me like:
- An audience of hands ready to applaud the completion of a concert;
- the hands of a crowd reaching for a handful of cloud or sky or stars;
- a single hand in the distance, preparing to pray;
- a soul scrabbling out of the grave ready to embrace its true existence;
- an old woman’s hand, sore, arthritic, barely able to knead another loaf of bread;
- the hands of a few dozen zoo monkeys, stretching their fingers toward some floating peanuts;
- the way my hands feel after a day of cleaning and dish washing.
There are better times than others to observe the trees of winter. During the day Winter trees are usually no more enjoyable to see than a tree when it is pregnant with leaves. The best times for me are at dawn or dusk with the dimmer light of day in the background or on a full-moon-night or when there are one or two or very few trees in an open expanse giving the trees the greatest opportunity to say whatever it is they have to say about birth or death or old age or loneliness or hope.
