42 Comments
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26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

I do respect a carpenter who admires living trees as much as he loves the wood they give him to work with. What a delightful love-song.

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Weston Parker's avatar

Thank you very much. (Where's that blushing face emoji?). I have worked with maple in different ways, as a butcher block thing for a chef lady, installed a few kitchens whose cabinets were maple. It's tough to cut, hard to sand, like all the hardwoods but when you're done, especially if it's got tiger stripes or the curly or the birdseye patterns, they can be really dazzling.

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Berkana's avatar

We are all beautiful trees ✨

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Weston Parker's avatar

Absolutely!

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Brian Funke's avatar

October is made for tree poetry. Great one!

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Weston Parker's avatar

Thanks Brian. It really is THE month. Coming up in a week or so, one about hemlocks, strickly a comic/silly poem.

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Brian Funke's avatar

Looking forward to it!

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Jack Berg's avatar

Do I get credit as your number 1 fan? Who are these other 799?

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Weston Parker's avatar

They are nothing but a bunch of bums...

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Faye Boam's avatar

Oh, yeah, this makes me feel all kinds of wonderful. I'm enjoying closing my eyes and letting the sugar course through my own limbs

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Weston Parker's avatar

Faye, you could have been that dancer in a previous life.

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Jodie Meyn's avatar

Haha! Beautiful redhead season!!

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Patris's avatar

Pretty spectacular. Beautiful

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Weston Parker's avatar

That song by Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely" comes to mind.

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Cynthia's avatar

I love trees. I love the red of maples but never quite connected the sexy side of a tree leaf. 🍁 love it Weston.

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Weston Parker's avatar

Thank you Cynthia. It's always fun for me to anthropomorphize. I started seeing that way as a kid and never grew out of it. It hasn't always served me well as it can encroach on reality but phooey, "reality" is overrated.

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Cynthia's avatar

Hahaha reality is. I’d much rather be dreaming. 💭

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Weston Parker's avatar

Exactly, except when it's time for paying bills, then I get serious because after they are paid I can get crazy again!😉😆🤪

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Dian Parker's avatar

My house and land is amass with old sugar maples which we never tap. 🍁

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Weston Parker's avatar

Are the leaves turning already?

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Carole Roseland's avatar

From a bum who’s only been on here since late April, I’m glad you re-released this poem. The maples win the beauty contest, for sure! Thanks, Wes!

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Weston Parker's avatar

She really does, she is a show stopper. Thanks for reading.

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Monica P.'s avatar

So descriptive it made me homesick for the Midwest. I had always thought of trees as a he not her. You have changed my way of thinking with your descriptive words.

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Weston Parker's avatar

and wasn't she a hot ticket?

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Monica P.'s avatar

Indeed, she was.

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Patris's avatar

One year when the kids were small - but big enough to be in school, my parents visiting, sister happy to take them to school with their cousins and deliver them back to grandparents for supper and homework, we made a daring move. Catch the east coast foliage before the rush.

To drive up north at the end of September for a long weekend in Cooperstown, with a copy of Last of the Mohicans, a sketchbook, a good bottle of scotch for the evenings, and ran for it as my birthday gift. Hoped to chase down the foliage up there on back roads we’d discovered on our other trips, stayed in a beauty of a motel closed for the season unless you got out and knocked and they let you stay - then another with bears carved from giant tree trunks outside like the columns of ancient temples, then a mostly empty motel on the lake on the outskirts of Cooperstown in a haunted room…

We caught the trees as they started to flash their colors all the way home, candy and baseball ⚾️ stuff for the kids and all was forgiven.. it was a great 4 day vacation in what felt like heaven..

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Weston Parker's avatar

oh, how wonderful. I loved the details of the carved bears. I remember our first few days away from the kids, we were giddy with freedom.

We really are looking forward to a New England winter, with the smell of leaves, all those colors. This is our last winter here so we are a tiny bit sad to say goodbye to the Aspens, the cottonwood and all the pines.

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Patris's avatar

You’ll love it (lord, I’ve been Nostradamus all day today). It seems it would be hard to leave that beautiful place you guys live now.. with your memories there, but must say New England in the fall and winter is hard to beat - including the cities. Not to mention the trains into nyc to see the rockettes and holiday store windows.

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Weston Parker's avatar

I am ready for all of that and Laurie has been ready for several years. She's been very patient.

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Patris's avatar

And shes wonderful…

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Ann Collins's avatar

I agree with Elizabeth. No one truly understands and appreciates a tree’s strength and beauty like a carpenter.

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Weston Parker's avatar

Thanks Ann. The maple is both strong and beautiful.

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Jennifer Lambert's avatar

A beautiful reminder to “seize the day,” as the colors are both spectacular and fleeting. I’m so grateful they are also annual!🍁

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Weston Parker's avatar

Me too, Jennifer and thank you for reading.

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LeeAnn Pickrell's avatar

I love the color of trees in fall and you’ve captured it beautifully. We get a bit of fall color here but not like the East Coast.

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Weston Parker's avatar

I'm glad you liked it LeeAnn. We live in Colorado and miss the fall colors.

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Lara Chapman's avatar

🌳❤️❤️

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Weston Parker's avatar

I love trees too.

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Lara Chapman's avatar

I worry about the people who don’t.

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Weston Parker's avatar

yes indeedy. Besides my immediate family, animals and trees are my best friends.

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