Old Tree

By: 
Alice McGinnis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OLD TREE

By Alice McGinnis

I’m keeping her alive you know, that poor old white-haired one.

Well how? Oh, you really want to know?

Comes the spring, my leaves unfold—in summer they keep her cool.

You’ll find I’m no fool.

Everything on the earth is here for a reason—and every season I find a new purpose.

I even let some obnoxious birds build nests in my boughs in the spring.

She needs something at times to get her blood to boil.

I keep losing my limbs. Well better mine than hers!

She really needs to get out—why, if she was in the house all day, I’d never get to see her, and she would never pick up my limbs and never get to exercise her own.

Then comes the autumn when my leaves all fall, then she really has to work.

She knows that winter will soon arrive and then she can rest.

Come the spring, we’ll start all over again.

How long? Who knows?

When she goes, could be that my mission is over and I’ll go too!

I’m keeping her alive!

Alice McGinnis has been a member of Writers Bloc for twenty years and has shared many of her poems and memoirs of her life that spans several decades. The “old tree” she wrote about in this poem is gone now, but she is still with us at the age of 103! The tree that stood in the yard at her home in Salem, Indiana, had to be cut down in 2015. Later on she sold her home and went to live  with her daughter Mary in Indianapolis. Although Alice’s eyesight is limited, she still writes regularly in her journal and continues to be an inspiration to all of us.

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