by Rochelle Mass

Trees help you see slices of sky between branches,
point to things you could never reach.
Trees help you watch the growing happen,
watch blossoms burst then dry,
see shade twist to the pace of a sun,
birds tear at unwilling seeds.

Trees take the eye to where it is,
where it was,
then over to distant hills,
faraway to other places and times,
long ago.

A tree is a lens,
a viewfinder, a window.
I wait below
for a message
of what is yet to come.

 

Award-winning Rochelle Mass has published widely in anthologies and journals both in Israel, where she now lives, and also abroad. To learn more about Rochelle and her most recent collection, The Startled Land, please visit Wind River Press http://windriverpress.org/titles/startledland.html

The above poem is excerpted with permission from
Tree Stories: a Collection of Extraordinary Encounters
ed. by Warren Jacobs and Karen I. Shragg
Sunshine Press
Hygeine, Colorado (2002)
Available at Amazon.com