Tuesday, October 29, 2013


 

“Trees” (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009) is about the steady deterioration of the family unit in our culture.

In recent years, the importance of these family trees has been lost in the individual demands of a culture more interested in material attractions.

Our family trees are dying before our eyes: replaced by a dependence on a government that has no appreciation for the personal development of the individual and no ability to decipher the metaphysical relationship between nature and our pursuit of meaning in our lives.

We watch our family trees fade away just as we have seen the beautiful trees of our early history disappear. We will awake one day and find that not only the elms and chestnuts, but also the maples and oaks will be gone, lost to diseases that killed them from the inside out. We should beware that our own trees don’t also disappear into the clouds we are currently building around ourselves.

Glenn K. Currie
 

Trees


 
The “spreading chestnut trees” of Longfellow,

And mighty elms that guarded our small towns,

No longer wrap our culture in their cool embrace.

They have gone to rest with our ancestors.

 Even our maples and oaks are wilting in the sun,

Slowly digested by invaders from the Far East.

We worry about ozone layers and assault from above,

And hide inside our doors, unaware

We are dying from the ground up.

Too busy with our lives

To notice

The quiet deaths

Of our family trees.

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