The Sugar Maple
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose loving mouth is pressed against the earth’ s sweet flowing breast...
— Joyce Kilmer
~ by Jim Eagleman
Trees are a good friend to have. I should know. I’ ve enjoyed their company all my life. My first real challenge was a tree, a large sugar maple near my house. I was about eight. My buddies and I said we’ d climb to the top some day, but we took our time. Out in the open, it grew wide and full. A beef cow used it that summer for shade and we had to be careful where we walked. It turned a brilliant yellow color each fall, other colors, too, but I only remember yellow. I collected its leaves for nature study.
Our third grade teacher Miss Zimmerman drove a yellow Oldsmobile convertible and wore her long, black hair in a ponytail. The yellow color of her car nearly matched the maple I recall, and what I remember most is her hair bouncing in the wind. She read us Joyce Kilmer’ s poem slowly and deliberately. Her dark eyes scanned the room at the end of each line. She said she liked trees. That’ s all it took. I started to pay more attention to them. When it came time to memorize Kilmer’ s poem, I thought about Miss Zimmerman.
We scaled the maple many times that summer, bare-chested and sun-burned. Soon I made it to the top with encouraging chants and a coke bottle full of water. The pinnacle was a tall, skinny, single branch that teetered above all others. From below, it looked like a comfortable crotch of branches to snuggle down
Painting by Kurt Eagleman into. That was my plan. If I could hold onto a single spire above, then lift my leg and slowly wiggle onto a lower foot hold, I knew I had it made. My reward was to rest there in that leafy tangle, jittery, out of breath, and scan my little town below. I stayed there longer than my buddies. Someone said we were like mountain climbers, proud to have scaled the peak.
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