Perhaps it’s the tree of my dreams
grown larger, the horizontal branches
that cradled me now softened by memory.

Or is it the dreaming tree, that long gone,
leaning oak in my childhood back yard?
I have known many other trees,

loved plenty of them—whether visiting
and giving them a friendly pat or
living near these vertical neighbors

photosynthesizing carbon dioxide
and water into oxygen to formulate
the very air we breathe. They stand

in my front yard, summering—
the great Japanese maple and the little
green fans shimmering on the gingko.

I love to tarry beneath the towering
sycamore in the back, its umbrella
of shade lingering over two houses.

It is the great-grandmother of the block,
one of our oldest ancestors, having
lived here far longer than we have.

And the neighboring sycamores, too,
planted in front yards up and down
street after street, dreaming

their arboreal dreams, shading us
as they have for nearly a century,
when this city was much younger.

We hope they survive us.
We hope they continue to
hold up the sky.

•••

Remembering Julia Ellen Cook Behrman Portz,
born this day in 1916—mentor, friend and spiritual teacher—
who taught me the finer points of meditation while sitting
in a great oak tree in her back yard.