Entwined
A sugar maple grew,
resplendent, in the wood;
her broadened leaves would soak
sun’s warmth from where she stood,
like other trees she knew.
Beside her stood an oak,
a tall, majestic tree,
and noted for his fame;
he stood courageously,
the birds and squirrels to cloak.
The trees, though not the same,
were fast becoming friends;
and call it fate or luck,
the shadow of each bends
around the other’s frame.
One day the wood was struck
by quite a dreadful storm;
the maple tree was hurt
when lightning struck her form.
She toppled and got stuck.
Her roots, pulled from the dirt,
now lay exposed and bare;
but she did not fall down
because the oak was there,
her ruin to avert.
He dressed her in a gown
constructed of his leaves,
and let her lean on him—
with tangled branch she cleaves
to boughs of gray and brown.
The day began to dim,
as sun set in the west;
and there the two trees slept,
both feeling strong and blessed,
and touching limb to limb.
When morning’s sunlight crept
upon the wooded scene,
day dawned upon a sight
both happy and serene—
for joy the rain clouds wept.
For all throughout the night,
a miracle of love
the Gardener had designed,
and with His hands He wove
the trees, to one unite.
The maple, now refined
by oak’s majestic strength—
the oak bears branches new
along his rugged length—
and the two still stand entwined.
Copyright © 2019 Abigail Gronway – All Rights Reserved
Welcome to my series, Incremental Poetry, where each week (or as often as I am able) the featured poem will be one line longer than the one I shared the week before. As the poems get longer, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to keep up the weekly pace, especially when I have to search high and low for a form that employs the set number of lines. But I am nothing if not tenacious. (My husband calls it stubborn.) And so I will keep pressing on toward my goal of a 100-line poem, even if there are weeks of silence between my compositions. As always, thank you kindly for stopping by.
Scansion:
Entwined
invented by Mary Lou Healy, aka Mlou on Allpoetry.com
consists of three or more quintets with interlocking rhyme
usually in iambic trimeter
L3 of each stanza rhymes with L1 of the following stanza
L3 of the final stanza rhymes with the first line of the poem.
Rhyme pattern: abcba cdedc efafe
Dark Side of the Moon 