Climbing

I'll admit, it's been awhile since I last climbed a tree, but when I was a kid, I practically lived in one! 

We had the perfect climbing tree, a maple, in our backyard, and whenever my family wanted me, they could usually find me there.  I ate snacks in the tree, did homework up there, played games with my sister and my friends, and read countless books while perched on my favorite branch. 

I found the following poem recently and it made me smile, remembering the days when I felt exactly like this....

Photo courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net

Climbing

The trunk of a tree
is the road for me
on a sunny summer day.

Up the bark
that is brown and dark
through tunnels of leaves that sway
and tickle my knees
in the trembly breeze,
that's where I make my way.

Leaves in my face
and twigs in my hair
in a squeeze of a place,
but I don't care!

Some people talk
of a summer walk
through clover and weeds and hay.

Some people stride
where the hills are wide
and the rocks are speckled gray.

But the trunk of a tree
is the road for me
on a sunny summer day.

by Aileen L. Fisher