A Final Affection
Some weeks finding a poem is easy. I’m in the mood for something related to a season or event or have a particular poet (or even poem!) in mind. This week wasn’t one of those. Instead, I skimmed – I know this isn’t the way you’re supposed to read poetry, but sometimes that’s just what happens – more than a dozen poems until finding this one by Paul Zimmer.
It’s called “A Final Affection,” and describes both Zimmer’s love and admiration for trees as well as his fear for them. What I love about this poem is the way it describes trees in such majestic ways, how trees “try to restrain great storms” and “prop up the darkness.”
I didn’t set out to find a poem for the week after Earth Day, but this seems like a good one. For if trees continue to dwindle – choked by urban development or uprooted to make way for sub-equatorial highways – what will happen to the rest of us? A reader asked this week why we in the church seem to say so little about the care of the earth when so many “secular” authors and authorities suggest it may be the most important challenge to address. I have no particularly good answer. But I do have hope. For even during this time of the relative diminishment of the church in society, still more people come to church on Sundays than do any other thing during the week. Imagine if we could harness the desire and commitmet of these good folks to care for, conserve, and cherish the Earth – with all of its trees – that God has given us.
A Final Affection
I love the accomplishments of trees,
How they try to restrain great storms
And pacify the very worms that eat them.
Even their deaths seem to be considered.
I fear for trees, loving them so much.
I am nervous about each scar on bark,
Each leaf that browns. I want to
Lie in their crotches and sigh,
Whisper of sun and rains to come.
Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.
When I die I want to slant up
Through those trunks so slowly
I will see each rib of bark, each whorl;
Up through the canopy, the subtle veins
And lobes touching me with final affection;
Then to hover above and look down
One last time on the rich upliftings,
The circle that loves the sun and moon,
To see at last what held the darkness up.
I heard this poem for the first time today (may 1, 2013), my grandson’s 21st birhday. I was so touched that someone else feels the same way as me abt. trees. I tried to read the beautiful words to my husband but could not articulate through the tears. Thank you Mr. Zimmer for your touching words & your concern & affection & appreciation for the trees.