ode to an elm

I've always found it rather interesting that, as an artist, one is regularly called upon to renounce and reduce what one loves most, the subject and media of one's art. A collagist must literally cut his papers and collected items to arrange a new item of beauty. An author must reduce his word count for that which he keeps to deliver force. A photographer must eliminate items from his composition. An aroborist must prune in order for a tree to flower and produce to its utmost.

In recent weeks, we have had to cut down one of our trees. The lovely, ginormous, multi-trunked elm tree that graced the view outside my window, specifically. Now, I'm not a tree-hugger, per se. Still, I'm a lot like my dad, a landscaper/arborist whose love for trees is insane. (Family vacations are regularly occupied with him taking pictures of trees, with the rest of us posed underneath for scale.) And really, what artist can help but love the beautiful textures of natural wood, the cragged roughness of its bark, the swirling vortexes of its grain?

Yet even with his crazy love for trees, he knows what they need. So when our lovely, ginormous, multi-trunked elm tree succumbed to Dutch elm disease, he did what needed to be done, no turning back.

Now not even the stump remains.

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—
The letting go
A Presence—for an Expectation—
Not now—
The putting out of Eyes—
Just Sunrise—
Lest Day—
Day's Great Progenitor—
Outvie
Renunciation—is the Choosing
Against itself—
Itself to justify
Unto itself—
When larger function—
Make that appear—
Smaller—that Covered Vision—Here—

~Emily Dickinson, #782