Unnamed Tanka
On sunlit snowy
Trail, footprints veer into woods.
I call out your name
to no response but rattling
husks of Beech leaves caught in breeze.
Yesterday, while walking alone on a sunlit snowy trail in Victoria Park Woods (first time in years) I was startled by the sound of dried corn stalks on the Wharf Road, husks rattling in the breeze off Pownal Bay but I was in Charlottetown and there have been no corn stalks rattling in the fields by the trails I walk for months now.
I looked around and spotted a young Beech, not more than twenty feet tall, whose leaves on some mid-lower branches on one side remained through winter, curled in on themselves, chrysalis- like yet appearing to harbour nothing but traces, memories of life.
Caught in a rapture of amazement I walked towards the tree and stood, eyes closed while the sound of the papery husks rattled on the spring- like breeze. I stepped off trail to reach out to the curled up lips of leaves, their form so inviting to the touch. I was nothing, if not enchanted by the perfection of their late winter offering. I stared long in amazement at the joy I'd been afforded. A joy I so desperately needed to behold.
If you ever wonder who I am, I am the woman who stops short and stares long, alone in wonderment, unable to find proper words.
Yours in witnessing and bearing beauty,
Jill MacCormack
Marcescence def'n: While physiologists agree that marcescence is a juvenile trait, most commonly observed on young trees and on lower branches, there is considerable debate about why some species would seem to be deciduous in all other respects except that they delay the physiological process of leaf shedding.
*this post has been edited to correct the tree species from improper Poplar (tired Jill) to Beech as corrected by my dear father (thanks dad!) as well as to include the above def'n which explains the leaf holding and supports my noting of leaves on the mid-bottom portion of the tree remaining wither leafed while the rest was bare.