WILLA v12 - Poetry - My Tree

My Tree

By Marcy Rayher

I knew as soon as her home became our home that we would plant a tree
Right outside the window --- It would bring us joy and pleasure
All the days of our life as our surging Love did inside. 

On a sunny fall day, we planted our fruitless pear, barely taller than
us and not much thicker when a broom. 

We try so hard to plant her just right - position, place, depth, stakes and all.
But alas we see she leans toward the house like a mother to its child -- We cannot
Force her back no matter how hard we try and so she tilts to this day. 

All these years I have looked at her through the window. And now I remember a
tree outside the window of the house of my youth -- I painted a picture of the tree
in winter - all white and a few strokes of black and brown. Where has that
painting 
Gone? Hiding with my youth?
 
Now at 63 I look at this scene in my head -- It's as if I'm seeing another life, another 
World – it's in a shadowbox on the memory wall of my mind - I peer in and all is
small and cozy and overly sentimental like a chapter of Little Women 
	And Jo is looking through the window at a tree in the snow. 

Reference Citation: Rayher, Marcy. (2003). "My Tree ." WILLA , Volume XII, p. 3.