from the pen of icarus blake

In 2013, the city of Melbourne assigned ID numbers to trees and gave them an email address, allowing the public to report downed branches or disease.  Instead, people wrote love letters to their favorite trees.  Everyone can write a love letter to a tree in their past.  I can.

Dear maple tree in my backyard,

Thank you for giving me shade through all my youth.  Throughout the years, I’ve watched the reaching hand of your crown lose fingers one by one as you age.  It’s strange, watching something so old and protective die while the younger trees grow up in your shade.  Are you sad they’re taking your place?  Is 100 years enough for you?

I am glad you’re still here, and I hope you’re around for some time longer to fill the yard with red leaves in fall.  October won’t be the same without you.

We love trees as we love our mother.  They raised us, after all.  Held us in their branches like cradles until we walked on our own.  When we dropped from the trees, we copied our mothers — our spines reaching for the sun like the bone-white trunks of birch trees.  Our legs grew tall and strong, in contact with the earth, and the trees no longer held us in their arms, but stood beside us to survey the land.  We imitate the likeness of god by standing, our soft bellies exposed to the clawing paws of leopards and lions, our eyes turned skyward.

The feathers on the wings of the angels rustle in the wind, same as the sound through quaking aspen.  They keep a watchful eye, they drop their fruit to the floor when we could no longer climb to reach them as easily.  Does Eden follow us from the garden, watching through the knots in bark?  Do each of us not have a tree we love, that loves us?