Beneath the Sugar Maple

I've lain beneath this sugar maple before. In fact, I know it quite well. And it's seen me and watched me throughout the seasons. And it has its own stories to tell. In Spring, it would hear about all my wild dreams for the months and the year still ahead. And I'd watch its new leaves unfurl and spread out for a canopy over my head. I'd lay there for hours and hours on end reciting verses 'neath a wet springtime sky. And sometimes I'd lay there for no other reason but to ask the Universe "why?" The maple, of course, would stand silent and still just listening to my thoughts and my words. It must have imagined "Just who is this soul whose passions and dreams I have heard?" In Summer, I'd lay on an old cotton blanket and gaze up at the now deep green leaves. "How beautiful you are," I would say to the tree and bask in the summertime breeze. Its shade would protect me on a hot July day and guard me from the bright August sun. Butterflies and bees and birds would swoon past me like a parade put on specially for one. All about, the clover would bloom and bloom in a carpet of purple and then white. And I would lay on my blanket 'til the sun would set deep into a long summer night. In Autumn, the maple would be changing again from its green mantle to that of orange and gold. And I'd find myself sitting 'neath it in the shortening days whose warmth turned to darkness and cold. I pondered on those days beneath that old tree lingering in the quick fading light. Its quivering leaves in the brisk Autumn air seemed to shiver through the frosty Autumn night. The gold maple leaves would fall by the score into delicate piles and mounds. And I'd shuffle through the leaves and they'd rustle and scatter, then sit 'neath the tree on the cold ground. In Winter, the maple would stand there exposed, with limbs and branches all bare. It seemed all alone, but somehow I knew that it knew that I would always be there. It stood in the storms, it stood in the rain and it stood against the bitter and snow. I'd look up at it swaying in the hard Winter wind from the snowdrifts where I stood down below. Yes, I know it quite well, this sugar maple tree for it and I grew closer o'er the years. And come nearer to Spring, the men would come tap my tree for its sweet syrup tears. copyright © 2019 Gregory Firlotte