nichepoetryandprose

Around us are spaces so familiar, we don’t pay attention to them anymore.  I remember this when I walk in the woods near our house.  On the ground, at my feet, are layers of leaves from last autumn, the carpet of mosses, the plants of the understory. 

And then I remember to look up and see the space above me. 

This space is the realm of the trees.  It is a space shaped by their canopies, the needles of the Balsam Fir and White Pine, the leaves of Red Maple, and the dead branches and twigs of the spruce.  Most of the trees reach upward, roughly perpendicular to the ground.  They stand together, parallel, the masts and rigging of a sailing ship.  Others have succumbed to decay and gravity and wind, and have fallen.  Their trunks make diagonal slashes through the spaces above and leave gaps in the canopy.

snowshoe trail and sap bucket on maple

These are spaces I cannot access, since my tree-climbing days are over.  But I can move there, briefly, in winter.  When the snow builds on the ground, it lifts me into the trees.  I am reminded of this when I see the empty tap holes in the trunks of the maples along the trail.  These are the holes left behind when we pull the taps at the end of maple syrup production in the spring.  When we collected the sap, the taps were about three feet above the surface of the snow, so we could access them easily.  Now, snow gone, the tap holes are above my head.  Our snowshoe paths were elevated into the space above the ground.  One winter the snows were so high, we had to trim the branches along the trail.  Next summer we could look up and see our winter path, traced by the absence of branches in the space above our heads. 

Usnea subfloridana Stirt. is a lichen often found growing on old and stressed trees in coniferous woods. The common name, Old Man's Beard, refers to the matted, stringy appearance of the lichen, hanging in clumps from tree branches. Lichens are made up of two species, an algae and a fungus, living together symbiotically.

Old Man’s Beard     

             Usnea subfloridana Stirt.

you and I

years ago

            forced our ways

            bent through the thicket

            of lichen and spruce

                        Usnea

                        caught in your beard

                        and we laughed

                                                absurd!

                                    us with stooped backs

                                    and grey hair?

            found a game trail

                        a strawberry marsh

                                    wild berries 

                                                crushed into sedge

                                                stained shirts

                                     lips

                                    and fingers

                                    strawberries

                                    dusted with sugar

                                                washed down with cold tea

                                                warmed by rum

today

an old woman

            alone

lost her way in the spruce

found beard

            caught in the branches

and cried

Published as: ‘Old Man’s Beard’, Summer 1994, the Fiddlehead 180

© Jane Tims