The Tanglewood Tree

I've always felt a very deep connection to nature.  At times the feeling of peace is similar to some of the most sacred experiences I've had in my spiritual life.  A moment in the redwood forests of Northern California my ears were filled with silence as if all of nature held its breath in awe of those old giants.  One day at the top of a mountain in Jackson Hole I wandered off the path and sat next to an old twisted cedar bent, no doubt, by the constant wind that howled up there.  The vista was filled with gossamer gray clouds hovering over windswept crags.  Up above the timberline, few things grew, making the land seem bleak and tough.  And yet if there were ever a place that God would linger in His creation it struck me that it would be there.  Many of my poems focus on aspects of nature. 

There is a tree next door that has grown wild and tall and twisted in the middle of the city.  It fascinates me.  I've spent hours watching it.  It seems menacing in winter, when its crone-like branches seem to reach downward as if to snatch an unsuspecting passerby.  The color of the leaves in summer are such a vivid green, like a neon sign announcing its vitality.  When it storms the old tree creaks and groans and thrashes it's limbs as if in pain.  In my mind I imagine it in the story of other peoples lives.  Only most times it is not in the middle of a city, but in the middle of a medieval forest.  As you can see I'm enamored of it.  And so, like many people and things I have loved in the past, it got the old poetry treatment. 

Dreaming Beneath the Tanglewood Tree

I run on legs so swift and nimble, run toward the Tanglewood Tree

Bright green buds alight so softly, decorating a maze of limbs

Like the winter birds returning from across the summer sea

If you listen as a child does the forest sings it springtime hymns:

Come and dance and sing around me

Come hear the wind whispering softly

Come braid the daisies in a chain

Hope that in your heart a portion of spring will yet remain

  He takes my hand and leads me onward, onward to the Tanglewood Tree

On a carpet of pure white blossoms we dream together, a lover’s dream

Brash sunlight burns my skin as it filters through the canopy

We stand and make our way back home, flowing together like a stream

Come and rest your back against me

Come be wild and young and care free

Come and see my lofty branches sway

Linger on with me throughout this hot summer day

Two children run before me now, a baby I carry upon my hip

In search of autumn berries we enter a forest Mother Nature has set ablaze

I pause and ponder what the aging tree can offer when its foliage, winter does strip

With a restless heart within me I hurry on through dusk’s growing haze

Come and gather my dying leaves I generously drop at your feet

Come remember the love that was born here in the summer heat

Come see autumn’s final glory, feel winter’s breath on the air

Hold your children close against you, all the love within you share

  The Tanglewood Tree looms barren in the light of a midwinter’s moon

We see that there’s beauty in bleakness, silence and tranquility

I smile knowing we’re both thinking of that long ago afternoon

The vital roots buried below us are waiting, dreaming beneath the Tanglewood Tree

Come and kneel together beneath me, a prayer of thanksgiving to give

Come lay the pain of old sorrow by, there is life before you yet to live

Come see how storms have bent my bows and yet they did not break

Rejoice for times the sun shone down, what a dazzling life it did make

- Denise Cooper Smith