(Thank you to our dear daughter, Bailey June, for sharing her poetry.)
For Jake
Red. The color of your little boots, feet on the wrong legs Poppa called it.
I run down the back steps, the ones dad painted how many times?
Poppas there, on the circular stone at the landing of those worn steps and I leap for him
He’s young with that grin, you know the one
And then he’s gone, I’ve leapt through him and I haven’t held on tight enough
He’s in the next world
The sorrows too great
So I run to the lilacs
There's comfort there
Although the blossoms haven’t yet appeared
We’ve been awaiting them
As we have every year
Since we knew they were for us
Was this where my romance with plants began?
We are playing in the heart of the lilac bush
The one behind the garage, before dad cut it down
I begged him not to
I understand now what pruning is
I’m almost a botanist
But we are there, now, and you’re wearing your little red boots
And I want to stay there forever with you
In our little lilac home
We have pots and mud balls
We could last 10 years
The season of lilacs
Going out without a coat
Before the last frosts
That dip in the driveway
The one in front of the basketball net
In front of the lilacs
Whose ephemeral blossoms conjure up such sentiment
Of Poppa's arms, the color purple, and your little red boots
The Love Tree
We rounded the bend in the pines, reached the base of the grass swept hill and were met by her. An evening shimmer of frosty air and the silhouette from a blotted sun announced simultaneously her age and grace. She was here before any of us were a thought. “That tree was my first love,” I said to him without turning. My eyes fixed on the lightning scars, we approached her. “She cradled us in a way no human mother could,” she told us things and confirmed our brightest dreams and deepest fears. She let us carve our names and loves in her skin and sent us home with spirits filled, us, having glimpsed the top of the world from her branches. We’ll mourn her when she’s gone like the grandmother she became. “Unless she remains, when we are gone.”
Bailey June Spry is the first born of Scott and Shawn Spry, born in Pontiac, Michigan, raised in Waterford, Michigan, now living in Kipahulu, Hawai’i. She loves much: her family, Dege O'Connell, friends, planting and harvesting in rich volcanic soil, fine coffee and wine, certain fungi and algae, among many others. May she share more of her beautiful musings with us here in the future. (Below, Bailey in 1996 and 2021)
