A Tree, of sort

A poetic offering

We passed the end of daylight saving time in Germany last Sunday,¹ so the sky has been darkening early—already in the five o’clock hour—but the sunsets have been throwing pink across the underbelly of the clouds. Even though I miss the long evenings of a northern summer, I find myself giving thanks for the chance to witness these seams of the day, the often-beautiful crossover between light and dark. 

In October, I also crossed over into a new decade. As I did, I thought about some words from my friend Amy Messenger, who said that your forties are the old age of your youth, but they are also the youth of your old age. (I don’t believe the words are original to her, but in my mind, she is always the one saying them.) That image—youth and old age alongside each other—has been speaking to me during this transitional season in my own life.

Last weekend, some friends here in Germany hosted a small dinner party for me. As I told them then, when you set off on an adventure to a new place, you don’t know what sort of friendships, if any, you will discover on your path. So the gift of gathering with new friends was not lost on me. Unfortunately, I had eaten a poorly timed bowl of soup at a football game that afternoon and did not feel like my best self during the party. Still, I am thankful to have been there.

After much overthinking—and talking myself in and out of it—I ended up offering a short poem to my friends that night. I haven’t had time for much writing, but I wrote these lines as a way of capturing the old-but-new reality of the season I’m entering. In the spirit of a little lüften, I wanted to offer them to you, too. The poem was inspired by a tree in Colmar, France, in the middle of her changing season.²

I hope these words might meet you in an in-between place of your own.

A Tree, of sort
from Colmar in October

An Alsatian tree, rooted 
along the eastern silhouette of France 
near the edge of a square, planted 
in tidy row with others 
of her kind.

She stands along 
the Place de la Cathédrale—
the age-old arches of St. Martin’s on one side,
pink and blue café facades
and half-timbered buildings 
on the other. Beneath her, tourists pass 
with their cameras, searching, 
always searching,
though not for her.

From her quiet place,
roots tucked beneath cobblestones, 
the tree is changing. Half 
her leaves have already brightened 
into tiny suns, while others 
remain green, not yet turned,
vert et jaune coexisting 
together.

This is her surrendering 
season. She will eventually ripen,
let it all go. Even in this timeless village, 
years still move forward,
carrying on 
in one direction.

But for now, she hovers 
on the border between 
warmth and cold, 
possibility and loss, 
carrying the stories of both 
new and old along 
her arms.

1. Germany’s daylight saving time ended one week before time change in the states. I love having a week where my clock is an hour closer to family, but it means my time zone math gets completely thrown off!

2. Poem title inspired by a line from Wendell Berry in Another Day: Sabbath Poems, “2013, I”: “He is a tree of a sort, rooted / in the dark, aspiring to the light, / dependent on both.”