Deb Asks Me What I Think Of Ichter’s Trees
This morning, in the very early morning,
I ribboned through the Allegheny foothills aboard
an eastbound train, where I first saw the trees,
the closest trees to Ichter’s trees that I have ever seen.
These trees that postured upward
were hopeful, lean, and tall in the mist of a
Pennsylvania hillside,
in the midst of a hundred other trees that
were much more squat and half again as round-
happy with themselves just to root and make do.
I thought of the Ichter trees and the who
of he that drew them, wondering if the child he once was
fashioned trees like these
and pinned them on the school hall wall
next to those of his classmates-
with the little round figures of
people-potatoes with legs,
and the requisite yellow sun,
burning bright with the hope for a bigger role
in the upper left hand corner of
the crinkled Big Chief page.
It’s hard to breathe on a moving train
with trees like these around and reaching
high on a Pennsylvania hillside
toward a lacustrine sky–
especially as the train moves on and
the trees give way to the stone remains
of Someone’s former home,
crumbling its grief around the remaining foundation.
Maybe one day in a long way later
I will tell Mr. Ichter about the
willows I grew up with,
whose branches lifted me dry
across creek beds on the way to the
train tracks that cut through Lucerne,
past the chert rock roads
and the beanfields and the Red Brush
water rushing someplace else.
Pennsylvania
1/14/05
January 13, 2011 at 21:04
breathtaking
January 18, 2011 at 18:54
thank you
January 17, 2011 at 13:42
I love the way you turn nouns like ribbon and posture into verbs, finding their action.
Is Ichter this Ichter? http://www.ichter.com/ I did a search to better understand, and voila! trees! Well-postured ones, in fact.
January 18, 2011 at 18:55
Thanks, Julia. Ichter IS that Ichter. He used to date a friend of mine.
January 21, 2011 at 09:20
good read AND you’re education me — had to head to google more than once 🙂