Loose Leaf Notes

 

 

Alwyn Moss, my longtime dear friend, poet, animal rights activist, environmentalist, author, artist, Rudolf Steiner kindergarten teacher and more passed from this world two years ago on Earth Day Eve. In honor of her on Earth Day, I’m posting her poem “First Tree,” which was the only tree on the busy New York City block she lived on as a child, the only tree she could see from her bedroom window:

 

 

 

 

There was only one tree on the block
where I was child. A single messenger
from the woods I rarely saw.
A pale slim thing set in some sand and earth
behind a ring of metal spokes
By who? What angel set it there?

Not a maple or an oak
but some kind that could breathe
despite the gas and dust and howls of sirens
from the hospital six lanes across Broadway.

Winters the leafless stalk shed half its bark
leaving dark patches on the paler skin below
In spring the miracle!
And more the miracle on that bleak block
of dirty brick and cracked concrete;
springs of green coming out in long twirls,
chill following sun, then chill – then sun again.
Until there they were, flat and clean
like open hands above us while we played.

Love? For that?
Even the branches were too frail to climb,
although we tried. Yet decades later that single tree –
erect and small in the long corridor
of grey lives in my eyes
holding my childhood on its thin arms
like laundry on a line:
first snows that turned the pavement slippery but fun.
The moist dim basement where giant roaches lived
under the old washing machine
The wheelchair child’s shrill laughter
full moons over water towers.

Ah, tree, you made the world a promise.
Your quiet breath at night beneath my city window
helped me sleep, entered my dreams,
told me secrets from another realm.
Still remembered… the secrets have come true

– Alwyn Moss – photo by Cambria