The Old Maple
Once there stood a maple tree.
It was tall and grand
It’s arms reached out like wooden arms
And It’s trunk was thick and Deep
When I was a child
I would swing underneath its shady branches
Singing my favorite songs with Dad
The basket swing would creak and sway in the breeze
The old maples strong arms held the old basket swing tight
Wind would caress my face, swinging free
The old Maple saw my first friendship
A summer afternoon
Two young boys
Swinging on the tree
The tire swing flying high into the air
Pushing, higher, highern higher.
In the fall it would drop thousands of colored leaves all over the lime green grass
The painter’s palette of leaves would crunch under our feet
We would rake them into giant piles and jump into them crashing and crunching
The Old Maple shielding us from the gray skies
In the cold winters
It would watch us as we built snow forts
And sledded down the giant mounds of snow
And when Night came
The old tree watched us walk into our warm homes and shake off our snow covered clothes
Eventually there was no tire swing, or basket swing
No leaf raking or snow fort building.
Only an old Maple Tree looking on
It’s ancient limbs becoming aged and weak
One day the old Maple was gone
Cut down to nothing but a stump of rotten wood
The yard where we played as kids seemed so empty
And the Old Maple which watched us grow up was gone.
1 comment:
Really well-done, Sam. Potently personal, nostalgic and wistful without ever losing its tangible relateability. Haunting, beautiful. And so knock-the-wind-out-of-you sad at the end, but sad in the same way it feels sad to look at toys from your childhood, or the places where you built sofa cushion forts as a kid, and to realize that those days of playing with those toys, and of fitting in those fort-spaces, are untouchable in reality and yet still so tenderly fresh in your memory. Really beautiful.
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