Sycamores and Wide Open Space (an original poem)

Good morning, sycamores and wide open space.

Thank you, trees, for how you’ve brightened the

moment when I’ve gone to the window to start

each new day and found you there, stalwart and true.

You’ve stood in a gatekeeping line, overseeing

the asphalt meadow of the parking lot below,

a gray lake bed that has willingly borne the rain

and given me the joy of puddles where my child

once stomped and danced, and where the

streetlights, each night, shine in glints of gold

and silver. I will miss your empty branches in the

winter, looking like candelabra reaching to heaven,

and the wonderful wait for green buds each spring,

the full leafiness of your summery sheen, and the

yellow descent of your leaves in the fall before they

wrinkle into crackles of brown parchment below.

Thank you for the years you guarded me while I

read books on the bench, while the neighbor behind

us swept up leaves and listened in to the stories I

read to my little girl. And oh, wide open space!

How I will miss your lovely vista, the way you too

stood guard over the industrial landscape, the hills

beckoning to us over the tin roofs of the lumber yard

that, lacking outward beauty, still gave us music

whenever it rained. You have been home. You have

been a place I never expected to feel such love for,

and yet that love came, as love sometimes does,

to surprise us and strengthen us too.

I will miss you, dear sycamores and wide open space.

Thank you for being a place filled with grace.

                                                                EMP, 12/9/16