Tom Painting
Folklore
It was mostly a house of discord; what you might expect from a two-bedroom bungalow with six kids, a mother with an eighth-grade education, and a father who drove a truck. But, for the century oak in the backyard that straddled the property line. Its branches providing summer shade and leaves enough in the autumn that, when raked into perfect piles, resembled kid-sized bee hives. In winter the limbs supported inches of snow and come spring the first budding; a harbinger of returning warblers. For no other reason I ventured home year after year until learning that a new neighbor had the tree chopped down and split into firewood.
idle afternoon
a picnic lunch
in the graveyard
About the Author
Tom Painting teaches junior high humanities and facilitates a birding club at The Paideia School in Atlanta, Georgia.
So much symbolism in a tree.