This is the story of the Poet-Tree.  On the first day, I put up a sign and one poem, Bob Hicok’s “The Mapmaker’s Faith.”
    

More poems appeared and, tired of the look of the sign, I redesigned it.  I put up two three-page poems, by the incredible poets Mara Eve Robbins and Leigh Phillips.  The day was breezy and the wind kept tearing the pages from my hands before I could attach them.  I dubbed myself the Drunken Laundress of Poetry hanging my sheets to the wind.
 

In the days that followed, rain tore down the full-sheet poems at least twice, and I re-printed and re-posted them.  The tree began to bloom and leaf in, and I remade the sign again and covered it with tape to protect it from the rain.
            

I have been loving the way they are getting weathered and twisty and discolored, but every time it rains, I must re-do so many of them.  Yesterday it rained again.  This morning when I went out to re-hang the ones that had fallen yesterday morning, it started to rain yet again.   I decided to put them into plastic sleeves to protect them from the weather.  About an hour ago, it started to pour with a fury, and the plastic has saved them from being shredded.
 

The joy of tending this Poet-Tree, hanging my sheets to the wind, like a magic spell: that will suffice for my gratitude list for today.

May we walk in beauty.