The leaves of an enormous maple tree in the front yard of a house on the next block turn pink in autumn. For twenty years I’ve admired this tree. It dwarfs the not-small house. It owns the yard. The grass beneath it disappears under drifts of giant pink leaves. I walk beneath that tree every day and every day I’m grateful for it.

It’s summer now, but in a few weeks green will give way to pink. Maybe today I’ll write a note to the people who live in the House of the Giant Maple and tell them how much I love their tree. Maybe I’ll include a copy of this poem.

The Copper Beech, by Marie Howe 

Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me. 

Click here for more information about Marie Howe, who is one of my favorite poets. Today’s poem first appeared in What the Living Do, published in 1997 by W. W. Norton & Co.

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