Bent Trees

This week I sat in on my children’s piano lessons. Their teacher is excellent and I love the way she interacts with them. My ears perked up when I heard her describing how to sit at the piano when you play. She said, imagine you are a tree – your feet are the roots that ground you and give you strength, so you want to make sure they are flat on the floor. Your back is like the trunk and you want it straight and tall so that your arms can reach and your hands can move freely up and down the keyboard. I found myself sitting straighter in my chair as I listened to her, making sure both of my feet were on the floor too.

My ears perked up when she mentioned trees, because I’ve been thinking about this poem I read in the Plough Magazine over the weekend:

The Hunger Winter, 1944-5

(The Netherlands)

 

A dark, dictated famine made by war.

Small fires, for warmth, lit up the towns: canals

blockaded by command froze up, as if

to make a point. The Dutch began to starve.

They gnawed on sugar beets and tulip bulbs.

 

Out walking here, in Naarden’s ancient woods,

I see a stand of trees made strange by war.

Bullets have signed the bark, their wounds a mad

and modern furioso. No Arden here.

And in the rows of trees, a few grow straight

but only for a foot or two, then veer

off east or west, continuing to rise

within a different column of air as if

an origami fold had given them

a surreal twist. These trees were cut for fuel

but over seven decades grew again.

Time is simple for a tree, it hides

its rings inside, a strange geometry

by which a rise inscribes itself as round.

The reckoning of feet or yards remains

visible, as though the tree might be

a giant ruler marking years.

These limping trees look frightened, almost as if,

having seen something terrible, they tried

to take a step – they tried to walk or run.

Three-quarters of a century is long,

even if less for trees, which hold

their winters close, and imperceptibly, rise.

They will never grow straight now, yet they grow.

-       Susan De Sola

I keep imagining these trees, bent yet still growing tall, with strong roots. And I keep picturing my child at the piano bench, feet on the floor, sitting straight and tall, arms and hands ready to play.

I rediscovered this quote on a post-it note on my desk this week at church, from Alicia Garza (one of the founders of Black Lives Matter). It’s from her book The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. “Hope is not the absence of despair; it is the ability to come back to our purpose again and again.” It makes me think of those trees, continuing to grow. And it makes me resolve to keep returning to love. To keep my feet grounded, back straight, arms and hands ready to receive and to give. . .. to keep growing.