PRUNING THE BIRCH TREES OUT BACK

 

PRUNING THE BIRCH TREES OUT BACK

               What are we really devoted to?

               That is the question.

                   --Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Simplicity of the Carefree Life”

                ...and her willingness to be wounded

                     Big Ammachi, The Covenant of Water

                     Abraham Verghese

All morning pruning in birch trees,

on three ladders. Lifting branches

maintaining shade, pyramids reaching

towards 40 feet, lost in their bright

white bark. Paper white, carrying

childhood images of mid-west natives

in books rowing in canoes knife-

hewn from slender trunks

of beauty. Jacquemontii Birch,

upright like a boy’s journey to be

a man, planted here in middle age

when I was still permitted on ladders.

I tell myself it’s a good ladder,

Sky from the Retreat Fire

mostly clear, but it’s getting warm,

inching towards 90. I’ve got another

hour. Big limbs down, on pavers.

Will I do this again? The wood is soft.

Forgive me for thinking that my life

is all that matters, she thinks

from the back seat of the bus.

Betula is Latin for Birch.

Trunks 36 inches in diameter.

I measured them. There are three,

planted beside a Blood Good Maple,

and the towering elder Blaze Maple

with its crown towering over garden

and deck of this sanctuary. Each tree

with its own vision, repeating itself new

every day. Pied beauty, all things counter,

Father Hopkins. The pruner, sharp

in my left hand, questions my eye,

never my devotion. Table and stone,

shade-rested, wait for friends. Karen

calls me the old man on my birthday

kissing me on the lips in the garden.

Betule jacquemontii, upriht, pyrimadal

known for its bright white back.

Yellow fall foliage for fall and winter interest

Betula, is Latin for birch.

Native to western Himalayas,

the whitest bark of all birch.

Fewer vein pairs per leaf

Sometimes call white-barked Himalayan birch.

First described and named by Edouaard S. Spach

in 1841. A French botanist named the tree to honor

French botanist and geologist Victor Jacquemont, best

known for his travels in India and who died at 31.

Great tree for shade garden

likes snow in winter, likes water.

A pioneer species, grow fast when young.

Seed dispersal, crucial, over distance

and in large numbers. Small, abundant seeds

strong winds can carry a long ways, blanketing habitats.

Pasternak himself is a birch tree

in Doctor Zhivago. Closer, the tree of life

to Anishinaabe culture. Wiigwaasabak.

Baskets for berries. Medicine, shelter.

Hug the birch tree, Mama,

I’m your boy, I was never lost.

Bonhoeffer says the old man

must die. Writing on baptism,

on one page, he says it four times:

The old man must die.

The pollen is thin, powdery,

and green when maturing, turning yellow

or brown when fully mature. 

Birch trees are wind pollinated,

and a single tree can produce

5-and-a-half million pollen grains.

The pollen's texture makes it easy

for wind to carry and release. Canopy

here, a rest stop. Late Middle English

from medieval Latin, canopeum,

ceremonial, a mosquito net, curtains

from the Greek. So far from home,

what I mess I’ve made at my feet.

From lopper to pruner to scissors,

my old man’s hands set aside largest

limbs for sculpture dream displays,

while cutting limbs into basket-making

length, others into twigs until they’ll

fit inside garden pickup bins. All

crossing limbs gone, what roses teach--

There is the cross--And two birches

by the gate are forced to step aside for it--

Yuri, Doctor Z--summer hanging on, disputing

shorter days, vision ever-new.

Jim Bodeen

15 July—18 August 2024