Friday, January 5, 2018

The Older I Get

"When I was young I cut the bigger, older trees for firewood, the ones with heart rot, dead and broken branches, the crippled and deformed ones, because, I reasoned, they were going to fall soon anyway and therefore I should give the younger trees more light and room to grow.

Now I'm older and I cut the younger, strong and sturdy, solid and beautiful trees and I let the older ones have a few more years of light and water and leaf in the forest they have known so long. Soon enough they will be prostrate on the ground."

"The Woodcutter Changes His Mind" 
by David Budbill, from While We've Still Got Feet: New Poems. 
© Copper Canyon Press, 2005.
at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

What To Do With the Body

One of the drearier aspects of aging is deciding what will happen to your body after its expiration date. While it 's true people die at...

  • Film Review: NYAD
    Now streaming on Netflix, NYAD is an inspirational quasi-documentary about the endurance swimmer Diana Nyad, who wowed the world with her st...
  • Finally, A Reason to Read the New York Times
    Brenda Lee today, at home in Nashville. Every Sunday morning my husband goes out to buy the New York Times , a newspaper so biased and smug...