Ode To A Cottonwood Stump Poem by Daniel Brick
Ode To A Cottonwood Stump
I Summer 1998
Cottonwood,
great rooted one,
leafy priest of our woodland church,
you sway in the blue air near your brother trees.
You are the center of every labyrinth.
You are a message piercing the sky's silence.
You are time's sentinel and nature's witness.
Six decades of growth have swelled your girth.
Five of us linking hands can barely circle you.
Wind and weather have scored deep fissures in your bark.
Its roughness is like flesh hardened by work.
Your branches make a green canopy over grass and dirt.
Shadows shelter us and cousin birds and deer.
You listen deeply to the sounds of everything alive.
II Summer 1999
Lost cottonwood,
shattered great one,
dead fragment of your giant life,
six decades of growth against one night of destruction.
Your hollow stump is rotted, exposed to the furies of wind
and weather.
Your death was as sudden as your life was slow.
We gather around your base, caretakers of your end.
Lichen still carpet your bark,
moss shines brightly after June rains,
green plants, yellow with new growth, sprout from your
pale fibers.
You cannot be finally dead if living things grow out of you.
You live again through them, through us.
We celebrate tonight, in light and in darkness,
your life, your death, your afterlife.
American artist, we held a memorial ceremony for which I was honored to be commissioned to write a poem which I recited to the viola accompaniment of a young woman named Karla. One of the artists at these conferences, who also worked with our students during the school year, was named J. Otis Powell. I
owe him many thanks for encouraging me to write my poems. Despite my diffidence, he never gave up on me, but kept pressing me to do more, do it better, and be proud of it! The high point of Mankato is a high hill called Garvin Heights about which I wrote a poem posted here called GARVIN HEIGHTS.
J. Otis had me recite that one at a reading at the end of the conference.
Thanks for all that support, J. Otis!
Dear Daniel, Ah, this poem... and you, for that matter. Setting me up with a happy first stanza then killing it with a sad one. And I fell for it...AGAIN. Any-who now to my review: I'm glad to know that in this day in age of technology and concrete someone still appreciates trees! Your poem is truly detailed in its reasons for your appreciation as you accurately named many of a trees life giving roles and natural features as a natural protector in nature. Your lines: Shadows shelter us and cousin birds and deer. You listen deeply to the sounds of everything alive. You cannot be finally dead if living things grow out of you. You live again through them, through us. Those lines are quite beautiful, I actually found myself mourning that tree, though I did not know it personally... Well, then enough of my flat humor. In short your poem really shed light on this beautiful tree and in turn gave it a beautiful death. A death most honorable because it still does its job and gives life even after its own has ended. Excellent job. Sincerely, -Sana Olivia Hernandez
I love this superb write about the life, death and afterlife of the cottonwood tree, with such inspired lines that detail the glory and fall of this magnificent tree it was an icon of nature's finest! !
You cannot be finally dead if living things grow out of you. You live again through them, through us. We celebrate tonight, in light and in darkness, your life, your death, your afterlife. __________-Like most of your poems this poem too has a deep philosophy.- - it is a celebration of life, Death is not the final end of life.If new life can grow out of it, how can it end?
Here only in two cases they could be avoided.//exposed to the furies of wind and weather.// //sprout from your pale fibers.//
I started to take your poem apart to comment what I was so impressed with however each time I read it I soon realized that I was in love with the whole poem. So befitting for this majestic one...... 'you cannot be finally dead if living things grow out of you'.....10+++
Simone, I just saw your comment now - it's 11: oo pm on Thurs Feb 4, a whole 2 months plus after you wrote, so my response to your comment is actually immediate in my time reference and very tardy in yours, proving once again T-I-M-E IS R-E-L-A-T-I-V-E. I am delighted to hear from you! !
Yes, the aged cottonwood lives on despite the storm: 'in eternal lines to time thou growest.' Thank you, Daniel for this eulogy. And, thank you, J. Otis Powell. Would that we all had had such gurus.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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A great homage to a towering beauty, now dead, no....... still living through progeny sprouted drawing sustenance from it! I love two lines in this poem more than the others! 'You are time's sentinel and nature's witness.' Looking at the tree trunk we can calculate the age of the tree and the years elapsed! Its roughness is like flesh hardened by work........ How true! !