[Photo credit: Kevin Huang, Burlington, VT, YWP Photo Archive]
CONTEST! Create an ode to a tree in writing or visual art. Close your eyes and think of a tree. Yes, just one tree. Is it the tree that you planted for your mother’s birthday? Or the one you like to climb? Have you buried secrets among its roots? Or is it a tree that you only notice in the quieter moments, gently waving beyond your bedroom window, whose movements, again and again, have brought your eyes to the sky and your face to the sun...? With the tree as the main character, communicate your personal relationship with it – in poetry, prose, photography, painting, drawing, documentary film, rap, interpretive dance – whatever form inspires you. SEE CONTEST DETAILS HERE.
When I say “fig” I do not mean the kind you get at the supermarket in a clear plastic tub. I do not mean the kind that is shriveled, and brown, and crackles when cleaved open by a child with dirty nails.
When I say “fig” I mean the kind that dangles, purple and glowing from a thicket of foliage above a cobbled street.
Have you ever stood at the edge of the Adriatic under the shade of a tree as old as a country and eaten the pith of a fruit the color of the sky at dusk?
What is this sudden urge we call longing? When, in the late afternoon of a Saturday in January, as you loiter under the fluorescent lights in aisle six, you demand to have the heart of a past summer on your tongue.
You buy a box despite them being old and dry, and stand with your fingers in your mouth at a bus stop on the corner of Dorset,
Walking in the forest rustle the leaves a watchful tree they listen without even hoping to be heard watching watching without a word they sing to the earth sway in the breeze oh, my beautiful trees! they long for the people known as the huggers of trees for then they can be themselves with ease silently they sway yawn Hum and moan look at the magnificent form of life That has grown till you must walk away and leave it once again alone