I’d better write this right now, before I get caught up in some Saturday morning to-do. While checking my email, I saw that on one of my rare forays into Facebook, I had sent a friend request to Kathy Young, who is a very, very nice lady here in Kendallville.  She had sent me an acceptance notification and I popped over to her Timeline and found she likes  “Backroads Girl”. At first I thought it was a book and clicked over to investigate. It turns out it is a Facebook page.

I scanned down the page and found a poem. I’m not a physical risk-taker, but it reminded me of some moments in my still undignified, past 60 life.  The first one that popped into mind was Socmonkeyjawea and the firepit dancing, but we can gloss over that.

Here is the poem, as cited on Backroads Girl. It is by Mary Oliver.

Don’t you dare climb that tree
or even try, they said, or you will be
sent away to the hospital of the
very foolish, if not the other one.
And I suppose, considering my age,
it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me,
she lives alone in a green cottage
high in the air and I know what
would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
she’d shake her green hair,
she’d welcome me. Truly

I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It’s impossible not
to remember wild and want it back. So

if someday you can’t find me you might
look into that tree or – of course
it’s possible – under it.

– Mary Oliver