A moment to speak of body image, the climate crisis, and willow trees.
By Shanley Smith
Truth be told, I once wanted someone to compare me not to a summer’s day but to the willow on 32nd street. Her wide reach, loose neck, and pliable limbs set a precedent. Her leaves, each like overstretched almonds, slendered their way into the category of grace. Her posture reminded me of a widow in chin-lifted grief.
A neighbor had strung a swing on her branches. Two ropes, now baptized by our soiled hands, suspended a paint-chipped board. On this swing I acquainted myself with the goddess: salix babylonica. The Babylon Willow. The Weeping Willow, as most Americans call the tree. The name fell from misconstrued etymology led by a certain King James:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
We derived the tree’s name from this poem (though an Israelite would’ve likely sat under a poplar tree). The weeping then referred not to the forlorn posture of the willow, but some ancient people’s grief. The tree merely shouldered their loss as they retired songs in her branches.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
At age ten I strove toward the tree’s physicality, toward grace, like the glass ballerinas suspended every year on the Christmas tree. As if the willow too were some fracturable beauty. It was a half conscious striving. At best, I succeeded in carrying traces of the willow with me. From her pond I laid siege over turtles, frogs, the occasional leach. My body served as an abstract map to her territory. Algae between toes, a stinging-nettle rash on my ankle, mud splatters up my calf, grass stains embedded in my knees. I trademarked dirt under my untrimmed fingernails and cleaned them only on the drive to visit my grandparents in Lansing, or in math class when the content grew particularly yawn worthy.
The willow, I’m told, symbolizes flexibility. In a storm her locks tangle together. On the stillest days, her mop of leaves breaths in unison with the almost imperceptible wind. But her trunk, one of the burliest of midwest arbor, hardly sways. In this balance rests her grace. She remains buckled by a root system, sprawling just underneath the top inches of soil. She bends, but never gives up her standing.
Celtic Zodiac recognizes eleven arboreal signs: trees that take turns overseeing the entrance of new lives into this world. The willow, in Celtic myth, represented the tree of life. Out of her hands hatched sun and earth. Out of those unspooled life in all its goodness.
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
A weeping willow lives approximately forty to seventy-five years. The tree on 32nd street will likely die before me. This seems to defy all I know of humans and trees. Despite her seemingly endless pliability, her base will finally go after years of give and take. I would rather have her life spread beyond mine as I joined the humus. Perhaps above me would grow a willow tree. Instead, should I ripen and wither, I will see a day when the fruit of my fruit cannot sit on the willow’s swing.
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
I wonder: does the extensive root system cause the willow’s demise? Willows crave nutrient rich soils near swamps and bogs laden with phosphorus and nitrogen. Its web sprawls and spans. To feed such a massive tree, how much sustenance must it receive? When the roots finally retire, does she depart out of lack?
I can imagine all too clearly a time in which the pond couldn’t give back. But I can’t imagine the willow as one that takes and takes until nothing remains. That is for my species alone to excel at. No, the willow–pliable, graced, creator of all we know today–wouldn’t leave us to waste. I, on the other hand, maybe. Ever since my days at the pond, I’ve proved expert at taking what the soils offer to me. Turtle, frog, leach. Soya, berries, meat. Oil, aluminum, a diamond ring.
Truth be told I once wanted (still want) to embody the image of sustainability. Truth be told, I sometimes wonder if I will contribute more than a single rope around a tree, a rope from which my grandchildren will metaphorically swing.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Under my feet the earth is tilting, not to punish, but because balance has kiltered off. Though it cannot be held responsible for what it has done (will do). Under my feet sits a portrait: Mother Earth, unhinged by her children’s loss. She grieves the barren tree, the polluted sea, the river dried up.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
We created a city on the shoulders of the willow’s grief. This morning the cycle will continue on: A freight of my country’s plastics, my plastics, will depart for another country. Most of the waste will eventually reside on the shoreline of a child’s village. Her family will spend hours trying to pick up the debris. The other waste will be burned to fill the sky with noxious gases, which will descend upon the land’s inhabitants. I wonder what trees watch over this child.
I’m sorry to mention this. I was talking about rope swings and willows. My intent was to sing. Instead, I look to the willow. For a place to hang my harp, a place to hold my question: “How can we sing?”
Shanley Smith resides in Holland, Michigan where she spends her days writing, teaching, advocating for the environment, and walking her dog. She proudly serves as Dimly Lit's head editor and founder.