Dogwoods on Arbor Day

“After all, I don't see why I am always asking
for private, individual, selfish miracles
when every year there are miracles
like white [or pink] dogwood.”

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh ~

Planting a Dogwood

Tree, we take leave of you; you’re on your own.
Put down your taproot with its probing hairs
that sluice the darkness and create unseen
the tree that mirrors you below the ground.
For when we plant a tree, two trees take root:
the one that lifts its leaves into the air,
and the inverted one that cleaves the soil
to find the runnel’s sweet, dull silver trace
and spreads not up but down, each drop a leaf
in the eternal blackness of that sky.
The leaves you show uncurl like tiny fists
and bear small button blossoms, greenish white,
that quicken you. Now put your roots down deep;
draw light from shadow, break in on earth’s sleep.

Roy Scheele

Vintage Plant Drawings
Explore the Unseen Beauty
of Complex Tree Root Systems

Previous Arbor Day Posts
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023 & Veterans Day
Arbor Vitae

"On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree . . . "
~ W. S. Merwin ~