LEAVES EVER LASTING

Nuts!

What tree is this,

That defies Winter and Nature,

So as not to give up its leaves,

Till Spring’s round the corner,

Why?

Why do Oak and Chestnut,

Hold tight their leaves,

Pray tell,

Like no other trees

Extracting benefits unknown

Or what?

Then in the blink-of-an-eye,

Shed their leaves unnoticed,

Noticed  neither by,

Mother Nature herself,

Nor us.

Harbering Spring

Should we save our leaves

long lasting

As well?

Pray tell.

Maby but

Why?

tom tenbrunsel

Poet Laureate of the Chestnut

Author’s Note: I worked to find funding for Drs. Dutch Weilich and Dennis Fulbright at Michigan State University. In addition I served on the Board of the American Chestnut Foundationin the 1970s. I visited the Magnificent Seven American Chestnut (Castania dentata) at Crystal Lake, Michigan. I met Mr. Unger in Battle Creek who first noticed both the decline and the regeneration of his surviving trees around 1964. Mr. Unger owned the big house on his property but preferred to live in a lesser building out back. The old guy had five 100 year old blighted American Chestnuts.

One of my favorite poets, Robert Frost, prophesied the return of the Chestnut around in the late fifties (before the “parasite came to end the blight” a decade later). I have two hybrid American Chestnut trees producing very tasty chestnuts at my home in Appalachia. The wise message from the Chestnut is to “never, never, never, ever give up!”

I just potted my sprouting American Chestnuts that I kept refrigerated in lightly moist soil in a ziplock over winter.

“Plant a tree that will outlive me.”