The Tree at Fort Sewell

The tree at Fort Sewell still stands. The micro-burst, the inverted tornado off the water broke the limbs, splintered the crown, cracked the soldierly countenance of this unique sycamore maple. It's one limb, the only remaining, still stays out-stretched over the craggy coast. One friend tells me he proposed to his wife underneath this tree's beneficent shade. Another said it was the place of his first date, sitting there with the girl who would later also be proposed to a year afterward on the same park bench underneath the same tree's beckoning limb. Someone wrote a poem that he gave to a selectwoman in town. I think he hopes it might save it from what seems a most probable cutting. The tree has it seems to have even gained in significance. Now it stands a sculpture that should it be purchased from the Museum of Fine Arts would be beyond the wealth of wealthy Marblehead to purchase. But here the sculpting is freely given, freely made. Now a more hollowed home for owls, squirrels, the common flicker. May it be kept in its new severe pruning. May it always remind the tourist and the native, the sailor and landsman, of the consummate courage in standing even among such wounds. It should leave us in wonder and how its woodness could stand the test of the severe whiteness of a wind's wrath.