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Poetry Friday: Storm-felled Pine

Storms and their aftermath have been on my mind this week. Walking in the park a couple of days ago, we discovered this tree, a victim of a recent storm's fierce winds. 


Picture of a tree trunk, with the broken top lying on the ground. Poem entitled Storm-felled Pine, copyright 2021 Elisabeth Norton: Broken noble pine, Once home to birds and squirrels, Storm-felled, will be missed.

This week our Poetry Friday host is Laura Shovan, who has written a wonderful poem celebrating a woman whose contribution to a classic Hollywood film was erased. You can check out her poem, and find links to all the other Poetry Friday poets, here.


Comments

  1. Lovely poetry! Glad your poems have found a stage! i shall try to come back regularly.

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  2. Elisabeth, wow, what a tree. Chopped off in its prime, it seems. I think identifying the type of tree as a noble pine makes the poem richer. Home to the birds and squirrels shows another kind of nobility that is now lost.

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    1. Thanks for your comments Denise. They have already cleared the fallen trunks, and interestingly, left the standing trunk in place. They have cut it evenly across the top, which makes me wonder if they will put up a nesting box or something, or if they think it will grow again? I'm not sure but I love to think it might yet find a way to be home to some of the parks animals.

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  3. Your poem is lovely, but it did bring back a frightening memory for me. Several years ago a pine like the one in the picture broke in a storm, flattened our hot tub, sheared off part of the cherry tree, and crashed through the skylight of our enclosed porch. Thankfully no one was hurt. Despite all of that, I remember thinking about the squirrels and birds, too.

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    1. What a frightening experience, Rose! I'm glad no one was hurt. We have been speculating about whether the birds and squirrels sensed the storm and hunkered down in the surrounding shrubs, or whether they were in the trees that fell.

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  4. I like the way the sounds in "broken" and "noble" play with each other, though I'm sorry about the tree.

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    1. Thank you for your comments. It was challenging to try to capture both the impact of the storm, and my thoughts about the tree, in such a compact form as a haiku.

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  5. Oh, I'm sorry. What a blunt-force break that looks to be. Thank goodness, nature knows how to heal itself. But, in the meantime, I'm sad that such a pretty and useful tree got chopped like that.

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    1. Thank you Linda. We had watched the storm bend trees outside our window nearly in half, so we knew the winds were fierce, but we didn't think that such thick, sturdy trees would be so vulnerable to them. Seeing the impact has been sobering. An entire tree with a trunk nearly a meter (ca. 1 yard) thick was blown over, the roots pulling up a portion of a stream bank.

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  6. Elisabeth, your haiku honouring the fallen pine was most fitting. Powerful image of the storm ravaged tree added further gravitas to the occasion.

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    1. Thank you Alan. I really appreciate your comments.

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    2. I agree: a nice homage to that fallen tree! I still miss some maples that our neighbors cut down in their yard a few years back.

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  7. I keep a 10-year diary, and as I glanced back, noted that it was this week in 2012 that our neighbor's huge hickory succumbed to storm winds and fell on their house, taking with it the nest of hawks that had not yet fledged. It was a tense time as people and birds had to figure out new housing. The calls of the mother hawk trying to locate her babies were haunting. Your poem echoes this experience: even though a tree falls in the forest, the loss is still felt by the entire forest.

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  8. To offer a thought to the tree through poetry is special, Elizabeth. It's sad when I drive our streets after a snow storm, a loss to many. Thank you!

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  9. hello Elizabeth on my 1st visit to unexpected intersections. grateful to laura shovan's hosting of poetry friday for finding you. appreciations for your applause in haiku for the work of this pine, with work still ahead for it, perhaps. maybe a sprouted branch from the side, or given time, a busy inside nest of insects, which could be eaten by birds. who knows? i like your compelling foto with poem. brava.

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  10. Such a dramatic picture! Yes it will be missed by many living things. I always feel sad in the presence of a broken tree.

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  11. Trees are sacred so it is troublesome to see the damage. Your poem reflects your sense of loss. During Superstorm Sandy my friend had a huge tree fall through her roof and cut through the floors of her home to land in the kitchen. The wind gusts on Long Island destroyed so much. Here is Virginia as I walk through the woods, I see felled trees that also must have felt nature's sting.

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  12. You said it all, succinctly and melancholically—my heart drops when I see a tree that has been taken by a storm—thanks for this heartfelt poem Elisabeth!

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