The high school religion teacher whom I most recall taught us to lie on our backs under trees and gaze into the sunlit branches.  I can’t do that anymore; my back would ache and I’d have to summon help to stand.  But I can tilt my head from the comfort of my porch and scan the oaks for birds.

Scores of them settle as evening falls.  Even more herald the rising sun.  I work on the layout of my little deck and think about mornings in Brookside, with our umbrella maple rising high and wide to catch the sweet rays of dawn.  That maple split in an ice storm one year.  Half of it fell across our porch.  We dealt with the mess, eventually; but the tree remained lopsided for the next decade.  You could see the sunset, filtered through its leaves and streaming through the open air on one side.

Whether I can see the horizon depends on who parks next to me at any given time.  For several years, my view of the western sky has been blocked by a blue tiny house.  But I’ve had an empty lot to the east followed by a small van for just as long, so I could see the dawn from my window if I focused on the skyline beyond the adjacent lots.  Whatever benefit comes from staring into the dappled leaves has inured to my benefit.  My soul stills and my psyche calms.

As I cruise into the last years of my earthly existence, sunrise and sunset become more significant.  Each day that I live brings possibility but now the moments radiate with the bittersweet tang of mild regret combined with gentle hope.  So I take every chance that I can to engage in the Jerry Curran tree therapy, sitting in my twenty-dollar porch rocker, surrounded by ivy and fluttering hummingbirds.  I rock, and I think, and I ruminate.  The breeze dances, the birds chatter, and the squirrel chases its mate.  I do not know if there is a God in a place called heaven but for the time being, at least, all is right with the world.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®