Memory Keeping

"Gather all around my dears
turn you heads and bend your ears.
Leave your games, your singing songs,
and come close to hear those memories gone."

We heed the call and drop our tasks
go running cross the farm
kneeling there, within the sound,
of the mid-afternoon's calm

And then the breeze begins to blow
and the tree begins to speak
of days, the country still quite young
and the land unclaimed and free:

"The first thing you do when settling
is to build a little home.
It's made of logs and keeps you warm
till your sawmilled lumber comes."

"(Of course that was before my time,
because the second thing you do
is to plant a line--Norwegian pines--
seeds that crossed the Atlantic with you.)"

"And over time you see them,
homesteads from every land.
Different styles, words, and people,
but the green windbreak always stands."

From her expansive memory
the tree regaled us many a day.
"These were all your ancestors
and they too liked croquet!"

There were always cold winters
and then thankfully springtime too.
All the while the fashions changed,
and the neighborhood, it grew.

There was lemonade each summer
beneath the generous shade
and the majesty of autumn,
always different, always same.

"That immigrant who started out
grew an expansive family tree,
but watching you all grow this while,
well it's been only me."

"There're new trees in the yard each year,
I've said goodbye to those who've gone.
But even the ones I came here with
couldn't hold on this long."

"Swingsets, tree homes, and hide and seek
five generations planting corn,
cows, pigs, dogs, cats, and horses,
even sheep have toured this lawn."

"I have adorned each photograph
since photos became the norm,
and before that graced the portrait
Doctor Stanley penciled of the farm."

She had withstood all acts of weather,
the drought and violent storm
and held for the last twenty years
the nest for that gray dove of the mourn

But in a storm last summer,
our tree, she lost a branch.
It missed the house by inches,
but sadly twas only chance.

Now we stand here counting
one hundred sixty rings.
And surely we are missing
the shade and majesty she brings.

The breeze still blows the tree tops
but without the murmured sound
of the stories and the memories
of that giant of the ground.