From The House of Edward

Our Friends

The morning had just awakened, stretching out her graceful arms in painterly strokes of pink and blue as she yawned with sweet breezes that sailed in from the east and made the windchimes sing in rounds of tenor voices.
The poplar noticed first.
Down below, the big white dog was tearing cross the garden, fur flying out behind him as he bore down on a fat grey rabbit whose spatula feet fast forwarded it... always just a bit out of reach... till it scooted under the wooden fence like a vapour. Stunned, the white dog watched the cottontail disappear with barks of frustration. The old poplar tree laughed, his lemonlime leaves fluttering in their Spring-born fuzziness, and soon, one by ever larger one, they were all awake to share in this comedy unfolding far beneath them on the garden floor.

They are the guardians of the ivy covered cottage that nestles beneath their greenly benevolent gaze. From their tip top branches where the Great Horned Owl surveys the midnight landscape, all the way down, down to their horrible-muddy, long-fingered roots clasping hands with one another far below the surface of the soil. They have stood their ground for decades. These venerable oaks and mischievous, cone-throwing pines. These girlish pink dogwoods and quietly handsome maples. Through winter snow and summer storm, they dance in the wind and lift their leafy faces to the rain, while mockingbirds nest in the crooks of their arms and squirrels chase squirrels on the tightropes of their high-wire branches.
Occasionally, especially in April, their bashful new leaves shyly brush the windows to say hello.

They are our friends. They are our trees.
And tis too true, no poem could be lovelier.

Painting by Joyce Gibson