Simultaneity of death and birth

The idea of this title came to me as I ambled through a woods named for, most likely, the last private “owner” of the property before it was let to lie fallow, to grow a forest of its own, and to become a Conservation Land of the town it is within the bounds of. I am grateful to this donator. This last owner’s death enabled the birth of this space of white and red pines, white, red, and black oaks, big tooth aspens, some hickories and a black walnut or two, some red and silver and sugar maples (the sugars, by the way, are probably in their last stand, being, as they are, trees in need a colder climate than is now provided in northeastern Massachusetts.), of flowering shrubs perhaps remaindered from the once groomed property, of skunk cabbage and small meandering waterways all leading to a nicely misshapen pond on which today floated, dabbled and dipped canada geese, mallards, and common goldeneyes.

I took pictures, some, which brought the idea to me, and some because the idea was now with me.

I thought of it some more and understood something, death is not only simultaneous with birth; death, readily when untrammeled, effortfully when bound, supports birth.

And. To live is to dance. This aged balletic elm, dipping back to the water alive with new growth, awes me with her flexion.

Then this Camperdown Scotch Elm below, cobbled, hobbled in the Boston Public Garden; God knows her history–perhaps intentionally imported, perhaps rode in on the boot of an intruder; sits reborn within herself, and that reborn self well aged, but never, I just read, grown tall. She is a wych elm cultivar, and known for being short and offering twisty, weeping branches….

Psalm 57:5-6
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.
Let your glory be over all the earth.

They have set a net for my steps;
my soul was bowed down.
They dug a pit in my path
but they have fallen into it
themselves.