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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “All the Stories” Down in the Dirt v211 (9/23) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology Instant Karma the Down in the Dirt September-December 2023 issues collection book		get the 422 page September-December 2023 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

All the Stories

Donna L. Emerson

Summer months on the farm
around the night fire, telling stories.
A dozen cousins, aunts, uncles, parents,
spun rolling tales. One began,
the next continued.

Woods in summer, abundant overstory.
Umbrellas of green leaves spread wide, often touching
other trees. Soft spread maple, oak, bending birch,
heliotropic cherry, black locust.
An understory of longberries, raspberries
blackberries we could pick,
then the Moms made pies for dinner.

Autumn brought orange, red, purple and yellow,
the winged fruit of the maples, acorns, heaps of leaf fall.

We skied in winter, eyeing
clumps of snow in the abandoned bird nests,
snow skirts on the Norway Spruce,
snowflakes scattered over us, the birds, the deer.

Fifty years later I’m keen to explore the trees
on our farm, their skeletal frames. They give us
the farm’s architectural map: hardwoods here,
pines along the back hill, Cortland and wine sap
apple orchards up from the barn. Northern Spy near
Jenny’s pasture.

New York’s state tree, the maple, both red and sugar,
sprinkled there in meadow, and there beside pond.

Sugar maples lined Emerson Road, at the farm’s birth,
a hundred years ago. Tall, now shaggy trees,
straight and stately, added dignity
to nearly three hundred acres,
much as the sycamores line the road
into Saint Remy-de-Provence.

Driving under them you feel that you’re
on the way to something important.

That someone cared enough about this land
to plant trees, strong and straight, that carry
their own stories under wide, round crowns.

Some we climbed, some we attached
our hammock to, our pool underneath.
We sat there with Grandma while Grandpa
picked raspberries for lunch from his garden.

The Moms and Dads who got along lay on blankets
under those trees and put sun tan lotion
all over each other, laughed and talked.

We ate bass and bluegill we caught in the pond
under these trees, swung on the swing Uncle Cecil made
from the maple branch closest to the garden.

I sat on that swing
as my favorite cousin arrived from New Orleans,
hoping he would think me pretty.

When the farmhouse burned down
I called Grandma. She only said:
the fire didn’t get the trees.

The maples are dying now, their
one hundred and twenty-five years
over. We let the massive trunks lie
where they fall, to admire them,
to let them nurse the wildlife
that lives near and within them.

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