big tree with swooping branches

 

The Copper Beech

by Marie Howe

 

Immense, entirely itself,

it wore that yard like a dress,

 

with limbs low enough for me to enter it

and climb the crooked ladder to where

 

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

 

One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell

darkening the sidewalk.

 

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the beaches,

I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

 

watching it happen without it happening to me.

 

 

 

*****

 

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.