A Ginkgo at Thanksgiving

On this day of gratitude, Thanksgiving 2019, I am thankful for Ginkgo tree people who stand true through this world’s injustices to bring beauty and hope.  

The Ginkgo tree is considered a “living fossil,” unchanged in two million years. Ginkgo trees are survivors. A-bombed ginkgo trees (sometimes called Maidenhair trees) still grow in Hiroshima. I am thankful for Ginkgo tree people who stand true through this world’s injustices to bring beauty and hope.


She lulled me
onto her honeyed dance floor
butterfly fans swirling
sun-kissed before twirling
                          down
                                    down
to brighten autumn’s browning ground

“How many Thanksgiving dawnings
have you goldened? I asked
the wrinkled keeper of
ancestral driftings
                        skitterings
                                  plummetings
yellowed leaves history-haunted

Wizened Maidenhair, friend of dinosaurs
Hiroshima’s great-grandmother and
neighbor to rush-hour suburbanites,
I marvel to witness your spectacular falling
                                                                  relinquishing
                                                                             surrendering
entrusting your harvest to cemetery sidewalks

She invited me to her ritual of
remembrance and return
each leaf giving its journey to the next
spring greening
                    resurrecting
                               new-birthing
I said “yes” and abandoned myself to her dance

Ginkgo at Home Moravian, God’s Acre.


Name That Tune

            for Maureen O’Donnell Monen

“I can name that tune in—

One note
Giving rise to
The sound of
Music
A song
A symphony

Life’s long lovely melody
Begun with a sunrise
Sunset sounding
Too often too soon

“I can name that tune in—

One note
Giving rise to
Guys and dolls singing
In the rain by the light
Of a silvery moon where
The wind comes sweeping
Down the plain

Hymns from somewhere
Over the rainbow
Smoothing careworn brows
With familiar refrains from
My favorite things

“I can name that tune in—

One note

Defying gravity
Transposed
Musical redux
The music of the night
Tomorrow
When you
When I
When we

Name that tune in—

One note:  love