She was being treated for cancer. Tests and probes and intrusive methods of diagnosis. She bore up and said to me, “Always carry a poem in your pocket and a hymn in your heart. You never know when you’ll be someplace disagreeable.”
When they put me into an MRI machine I promised myself not to open my eyes. Not a peek, not one flutter. I didn’t want—or need—to see my disagreeable confinement. My shut eyes opened a world, where poetry lives and scenery and songs. The eyes of my heart gazed upon the mountains, an eagle’s view from the plate glass window of the BRCC dining room. A melody entered my heart, a song of the wood. And the poem that I recited? Well, you will know the one.
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
-Joyce Kilmer
Come see some trees. Soon.
