tree

                One day I was walking around in my backyard. It was my peaceful getaway from stress. I had final exams coming up, and passing those was my only way out of this town. I needed to get out. I grew up here, and I rarely left. When I did, it was only to visit relatives. Everyone at school knows each other. We know first and last names, and sometimes middle names. I just wanted to explore the world, try out a big crowd, and meet new people.

                Whenever I walked to my backyard, I would climb our big willow tree, in hope that one day it would talk to me like the tree in Pocahontas. That had always been my favorite Disney classic.

Today was an especially warm day. It was October. Leaf peepers were starting to come and the mountains looked amazing. I breathed in the warm autumn breeze. I was writing in my journal about the whole week, when all of a sudden I hear a voice. The voice was unfamiliar, but it seemed comforting.

“Hello?” I asked. I was little bit worried, but how harmless could someone be? I looked down, but I didn’t see anyone.

“Hello my dear, are you alright?”

“Who are you?” I was unsure of what I was getting myself into.

“Why I’m your willow tree! They call me Mrs. Willow.” Whoever said that had pure confidence in their voice. It couldn’t be possible though. The tree was alive, but it had no human features, therefore it cannot speak. Read more »

Gleaming metal trunk,

Sections gracefully melded

Limbs crooked and broken.

Shining silver branches

Reach for the heavens.

Unnatural beauty

Erupting from the earth

Reflecting the sun

In tangles of silver.

Ethereal tree, stillborn,

In a forest, ephemeral. 

  Read more »

I wrote this during a study period, but as the internet at my school was down, i didn't get a chance to post it until now.

Snow falls lightly on my shoulders, shaken from the branch above.

Birds cry in alarm as a mane of golden hair scrambles upwards.

I just wait as the alarm cries slowly stop and turn back to singing, making a perfect song as they cry out for spring.

The golden head of hair turns and looks down at me and smiles.

The icy-blue eyes give a perfect balance to her golden hair, shining like the sun. Read more »

I always have crazy dreams. A lot of them dont even make sense. Like one dream was where my house was huge and very fancy just like a hotel and there was a growing tree inside my house right in the center. It was like a tree house and there were classmates of mine that were in it. Some of them I didn't even know.They were having a huge party and they had a lot of junk food to eat. Everyone was laughing and having a great time. Read more »

Family Tree

My dad is the root, keeping us
firm and standing tall.
Mom is the bark,
protecting and watching,
clinging to us, never letting go.
My brother is the trunk,
bold and solid,
supporting us always.
My sister is the branches,
showing us how to be
tall, proud, and strong,
and I myself am the leaves,
shading and observing,
looking up
to the blinding
blue
sky.

3/8/10

Marshal and Lucy

By Paul Detzer
Hartford High School, Grade 9

Mamma’s pretty strict, but she’s a great mom and I love her so much. She lets me and my brother Marshal play a lot of the time when she’s home, and when she’s at work she expects us to do the laundry but after that we can do whatever we want; but she says "Stay out of trouble, ya' hear?."
She leaves for work at the factory early in the morning, before I’m even up. Sometimes I wake early to say goodbye because sometimes she doesn’t get home until eight at night, my bed time. But normally she gets home at five, and she can fix us dinner and read us a story and clean the house a little. Marshal gets to stay up until 10, and if I try I can put my ears to the wall between my room and the living room and hear them talking. Mamma says when I’m thirteen, too, I can stay up with her and Marshal and be in their conversation. But I’m only nine, so that’s really far away. Read more »

Sitting atop a dusty old shelf I remain
Waiting days and nights for a play friend
A smile plastered onto my face, sewn with red cotton thread.
Lessons of lonely patience learned on my shelf, waiting for that friend.
 
The shelf is my home in the hot sunny days of summer.
A gently breeze plays with my calico dress, swishing it back and forth.
Hair tossed from its bun falls downward, shielding my eyes from the surrounding bedroom.
 
For I am an old rag doll, without a play friend
The child grown, left me sitting atop her once precious shelf
Until this day will I stay sitting upon this shelf. For today, with her grandchildren will she find me.
Once again, I am her playmate, dressed in beautiful clothes.
Taken for trips under the great oak tree, sharing secrets while baking cookies.
As her age may be quite old, we will always be friends.
 
No longer am I sitting upon that dusty old shelf.
Resting now on a soft linen pillow Read more »

You know what I've always wanted to do?
I've wanted to farm apples.
Not a general farm, but a farm with every kind of apple tree I could possible grow in Vermont. I'd have a greenhouse for apples that need certain temperatures and fields of apples that grow well, like Juna Golds and Juna Macs. Maybe even get my hands on a Winter Banana tree.
It's a bit of a weird dream, wanting a farm in an economy that seems to be killing them off so fast... but I want that satisfaction of waking up in the morning and looking out on my various apple trees. Living together and bearing different fruit at different times, all of them delicious. All the flowers in the spring and the green leaves, the work and the smell of fresh dirt and clean air... and then the autumn monotony of apples. The almost lipstick smell of Pink Ladies and the sweet smell of Red Delicious with the sour of Granny Smith. The taste of first season apples, every season, all the way into November. Read more »

This just popped into my head. It may be continued...

She lived on a star at the end of the galaxy. All alone, trapped in the endless confines of the empty edge of space, alone in desolate blackness, framed in cold, starlit light. Her world, her star, was nothing, devoid of any oxygen, and water, any life. There was only her, her and the infinite space.
At least, that was what it felt like.
Her star was a tree, framed with other trees, a forest of leafy splendor that reached eternally up into the clouds, burying itself in the stars. The real stars. Read more »

There i see
Lofty and proud
Stands a young Birch
Crooked and towering high in the sky
A breeze shakes the wind
Making Music for me to hear
All the birds sang and joined in the chorus
As if to make a rythm in the forest

Waiting Rooms and Living Rooms
By Christopher Leow

From a very tall tree in a forest, a seed falls. It slowly stumbles over, and over slowly making its way down. Around it other seeds fall, but at different paces. The ground gets closer, and closer, but it seems to take its time. Waiting until it finally, hits. Years later the seed grows into its own tree, its own life, along with the other seeds. When the seed is falling, was that just a period of time till it hit the ground and started to grow, or was it part of the growing?
What is the difference between living and waiting?
Waiting is time to just live, time to think, and time to just be. These waiting periods fill lives in, time between beginnings and ends. This time is just living, nothing out of the ordinary. Read more »

As I watch the children run past my window
The birch trees reach out to them
They grab for the boys and girls and the girls and boys grab back
Reaching out for the snowy bark
The fall heat reflecting off of their golden foliage
I remember back to my youth
And loaded with ice on a sunny winter morning
The trees would crack and then start to melt
I would race out and help them with their burden
The birches would thank me and let me climb their branches
I would spring up onto their wooden skin
Like a bird climbing the clouds
I would glide from birch to birch
Now the children are making their way back toward their houses
Laughing, and full of energy, but done for the day
I grab my coat and gloves
The hat that was knitted for me sits next to the door
As I slip out the door I feel the fresh evening air brush my cheeks
My feet hit the road as I walk towards my favorite evening spot
I reach my destination and stare wondrously at the magnificent birch looming up ahead Read more »

Trees and the Seven Seas

I wish I could give you the ocean,
the moon and the trees,
the stars,
the lakes, and the seven seas.

I wish I could give you the hills,
the valleys and the sun,
the sky,
the fields and flowers by the ton.

Stop,
look until you find it,
not once, but twice,
because it’s all there.

~Hannah Luce

Perspective

I. Tree
A. Spring
1. I am reborn
2. Colors bloom around me
a. Consisting of vibrant hues that only the supernatural are capable of creating.
B. Summer
1. My shade is sought
a. I promise to cool you down
2. I am starving. There has been a drought.
a. Feed me, feed me.
i. You exhale and I inhale
ii. I exhale and you inhale
b. I’d say that’s a fair trade.

C. Fall
1. Orange, red, green, yellow and purple leaves surround me
a. Are those mine?
b. Am I dying?
2. You rake them up
a. Wait, I need those!
b. Will they ever grow back?
3. I watch my brothers and sisters being hacked away at
a. Their screams are inaudible to the human ear, only we trees can hear our siblings’ screams pierce the air.
4. How selfish.
a. how selfish to kill for one’s own comfort at the cost of another’s.

D. Winter
1. My fear has been confirmed.
a. I am dying.
2. Cold, brittle, and dry become I. Read more »

Sunlight streamed through the gaps between the crinkled branches. The hills overflowed with green grass swaying with serenity. A small girl with tear-stained cheeks sprawled on her back in the quiet shade the dying willow provided with its dark emerald leaves. Read more »

Sunlight streamed through the gaps between the crinkled branches. The hills overflowed with green grass swaying with serenity. A small girl with tear-stained cheeks sprawled on her back in the quiet shade the dying willow provided with its dark emerald leaves.

April laid there more often then not. The soft grass perfectly cushioned her tired back and left tiny smears on her flowy shirt. In the shade of the dilapidated tree, she was more than safe. She was alone.

From all those times when there was no way to spill out all the wrongness, she could escape. From the times she opened her mouth wide and screamed silently so that no one would scare, she could be gone. From every difference, worry, frustration in her life, she could break free.

The tree and the hills and the grass couldn’t heal her issues. Even if they could, April herself would not be healed. But for then, it was enough for her to lay and feel the green.

She doesn't just
hug trees:

she
kisses them
until her lips are
bloody
with their pain.

Her lips speak to them,
trying to weave
weak comfort
into their dying
flesh.

Sometimes they
kiss her
too.
Sometimes
she smiles,
her limbs
becoming
branches.

She watches the tears
seeping out
from the cracks
in their bark,
glowing faintly,
and pulsing
like a million Read more »