#amherstma
I sing the Dawn Redwood,
and I sing Amherst that shelters it,
and the long patience of the earth that forgot,
then remembered.
I sing the tree that learned how to wait.
Once it walked the whole Northern world,
its feet in swamps, its needles brushing mammoth breath,
its cones listening to ice and fire argue over centuries.
Then silence came.
The books closed.
The pages of stone said, extinct.
But the tree did not argue.
It stood quietly in a hidden valley,
mist rising from Hubei soil,
while empires burned and railroads sang,
while clocks were invented and wars named themselves.
I love this about it,
that survival does not always announce itself,
that endurance can look like stillness,
that the future sometimes hides behind a mountain
until the right eyes arrive.
O Dawn Redwood,
you drop your needles each year like a practiced truth,
not clinging, not hoarding,
trusting the seasons to return what they must.
Green to bronze, bronze to bare, bare to promise again.
You stand now in Amherst,
flanking the doorway of prayer and song,
two witnesses at the Goodwin church,
your roots holding stories older than the cornerstone,
your height speaking faster than the town can write you down.
You were planted after memory forgot to list you,
yet you rose anyway,
as all necessary things do.
I see you from Woodside Avenue,
from Tyler Place,
from Belchertown Road where young ones stretch their limbs,
and I feel the town breathing through you,
cooling itself leaf by leaf.
O people of Amherst,
this is how time returns to us,
not as a museum piece behind glass,
but as shade on a sidewalk,
as red bark peeling in the afternoon sun,
as children learning the word fossil
and then learning that fossil does not mean gone.
I say the tree belongs to the future
because it remembers the past without being trapped by it.
I say the tree is a lesson in mercy,
in patience,
in the radical act of continuing.
Sing with me, Dawn Redwood,
you who were lost and found without changing your name,
you who remind us that extinction is not always the final verse,
that the earth keeps drafts,
and sometimes revises.
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 7:29 AM UTC
On a winter day in Amherst town,
When early dusk is settling down,
The drums awake the waiting street,
With steady hands and dancing feet.
From fire doors in painted red,
The lion lifts its bright-stitched head,
It bows to luck, to years gone by,
Then greets the hope that's passing by.
Through downtown paths the colors roll,
A cloth-bound heart, a borrowed soul,
Each cymbal crash, each measured spin,
Invites the coming fortune in.
At teahouse doors and kitchens warm,
The lion pauses, takes its form,
Bestowing luck from stop to stop,
Where laughter steams and woks don't stop.
At two o'clock the journey starts,
Through careful time and beating hearts,
Each moment marked, each doorway blessed,
No hurried step, no second-guess.
From bowl to cup, from spice to steam,
The streets themselves begin to dream,
That luck can walk, that joy can stay,
And lead the year the proper way.
When drums grow soft and lions rest,
The town feels lighter, quietly blessed,
For in the cold, the old, the new,
Amherst remembers what to do.
Feb 10
Feb 10, 2026 at 8:48 AM UTC