Great Lone Tree, So Beautiful
Great Lone Tree, So Beautiful
Great lone tree standing in the middle of Harper's lot
weathering all attacks from so many enemies it has got
Struck eleven times by lightning in as many years
last one burned so hot that sap burst forth like tears!
First plague was ten thousand locusts eating it's fruits
next came grub worms devouring it's sweet tender roots
After that first fire came burning high above it's trunk
then came the woodpeckers pecking out chunk by chunk!
Next the teenage boys driving in nails for a playhouse
adding to the big holes bored so deeply by a wood mouse
Second fire burned it's trunk until hard rain put it out
followed by six years of county's hottest, longest drought
Great lone tree had weathered so many terrible attacks
insects gnawing ever deeper it's long and deep cracks
These many years it gave it's fruit and comforting shade
it's life beaten but that majestic beauty never did fade
Great lone tree stood reaching ever upward to Mother Sky
enduring all while so stubbornly refusing to ever die!
Robert Lindley 06-10- 2014..
Rewrite from the late 70's. Based on the huge mulberry tree
in vacant field just behind our house.. So beautiful but one
could see the many scars it had endured yet still survived!
I used to pick the mulberrys in the bountiful years!
Mother would make cobbler from them and it was glorious
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