On my old street, a neighbor down the block had planted a young redwood tree out front, in the tiny strip of sidewalk on the narrow, narrow street of century-old houses. The neighbors who lived there long before me shook their heads at his folly, the tree already well beyond the top of the house, top out of sight above any of its neighbors. Thus, this poem captures a personal musing of my own, although much more lyrically than I (or any of the worried neighbors) would have managed...
Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books -
Already the branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
- Jane Hirshfield
(via whiskey river)
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