Tree

PAD Challenge day 22. For today’s prompt, pick a plant, make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Pick a favorite vegetable or fruit, a flower, a tree, even a shrubbery.

I chose Tree in memory of our red maple and silver birch, that are no more...

In April we begin eying spring's tree,
hungry for the music of leaf-melody!

A week ago we were watching our trees anxiously
as lofty limbs sagged beneath baggage of ice and snow...

...and praying history would not repeat itself!

Dear Tree,
like stalwart sentinels you stand
unflinching through the years
to guard the yard or line the lane
with leafy belvederes

you wear each season well, my lovely
weaver of the bow'r
sometimes you sport a snowy shrug
sometimes green leaf and flow'r

In brawny arms you cradle dreamers
lured to your fixed pose 
You, bearer of the childhood swing
and spring's first dainty rose

... and something 'bout your steadfastness
seeps into memories
where the backdrop to happiness
is oft wove through with trees

...a stark, gray leaflorn labyrinth
or froth of chartreuse tress
before red, orange and cinna-bronze
dwindles to quietness

where summer slides its zephyr-bow
 above soft shadows flung
As melodies, now high, now low
from wooded breath are wrung

...where silver quivered, pooled and slipped
like elfin-feet a-dance
until the test of time undid
your patriotic stance

'ere arms that held the trilling bird
and withstood nature's ire
lie, like shards of earth's broken heart
to feed the winter fire

 ...and we mourn thee, fair minstrel
of midnight's plush lullaby
 where your felled lyre leaves nothing but
A big hole full of sky

Janet~