Trees, more specifically the drawing and painting of trees, never cease to fascinate me. Often, the winter cold prevents me from drawing or painting them on site. In the spring I venture to the banks of Rivière-des-Prairies near home to draw their form. It is a great time of year to do studies of trees because their foliage has yet to obliterate trunks and branches. Many parks, including the nature park Île de la Visitation lining the Back River, anticipate my arrival to sketch and contemplate their trees.




Still
Stoic witnesses, Oak, Elm, Pine et al.
Are you loved? Have you hugged a human today?
Wrapped leaves and bark and blessed the lips of kings and thieves?
Who knows your curves and cores and fallen branches?
I do, I think I do, of some, of a few.
Where thick the games of camp, you see the prowling paws of youths,
(we hid under boughs and kissed your feet,)
And spell out magic in unending green sheets, coded text replete,
Finding your patterns, pines to valleys, deciduous to peaks
All roots entangled passing our histories via sap; You know us far more than we do you.
In city you hold your breath in cubicles of cement
The tempo of your span marbling with the click of heels and streetlight counters,
Blessing the busy with respite from their urban jungle
A convent of nodding leaves.
Global shifts inter the tallest, oldest, cracked, felled, here and there,
and we sigh and remember
How you grew, how many hands knew you.
A romantic breeze jostles, a kid climbs, a kite catches, a kat’s curious, what fun
An updraft whips your sleeping buds, we look for clouds
An avid gust shakes your trunk, records circular hold tight within
as we scurry indoors, warned by a rare creak
take cover
Wind, jealous, invisible ax.
And only now can I lay my hands on your heart and count the years
I knew you. You will heat my bones, you will melt to sheets
so that I may tell and pen and root my history
somewhere
Poem by A. J. Murphy
Art by Raynald Murphy sca
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