"Capturing Beauty"
Scott Hutchison, Poet: "The Beauty of Dead Trees"
Scott’s poetry is narrative and earthy; it delves into human complications
arising from youth, family, gender, race, social status, and poor choices.
It also finds joy and light in navigating those complications, seeking reflections
that might lead us all to greater understanding, and to choices that might result in better days for everybody. He will be reading "The Beauty of Dead Trees" and poems from his recent book, "Moonshine Narratives."
Scott T. Hutchison grew up in Virginia on a thoroughbred race horse farm.
He holds degrees from Virginia Tech, Middlebury College, and Vermont College.
He taught high school English and Creative Writing for thirty-seven years,
and served as State Director for the New Hampshire Young Writers’ Conference for thirteen years,
As advisor to Gilford High School’s literary magazine he saw the publication
named best small-school lit mag in the country four different times
(by The American Scholastic Press Association).
Scott has published poetry in over 200 journals, and also has over 20 stories in print.
He is the author of two books of poetry: "Reining In," from Black Bird Press
and "Moonshine Narratives," from Main Street Rag Publishing.
The Beauty of Dead Trees
See them, as silhouettes, an orange moon circling
reverently behind their historic demise—weathered bodies
of warp and frantic reach, dancing with old familiarities
riding the wind. Ancient monarchs all—having extended
their arms, capturing the sun, while untold lesser seeds
stunted in desperate dark mold, beneath scatters
of leafy cellular dust. When you see dead trees, remember:
they have spanned slow unfoldings of time, tasted
the lives of thousands upon thousands--
brethren, beasts, fungi and insect hordes. And
they have tasted the remains of us. They knew,
and were quietly satiated. Beyond rooted earth,
they’ve endured green breeze-stirrings
while casting themselves skyward, gorging
on light and air, passionate for conversion,
all the while sending their spiraling, hungry dreams
deep and wide, drinking ardently
from the cold veins beneath them,
their rough skins laughing
at ephemeral springs and droughts
of unkindness. They have fed, flowered,
forgiven--fearing only the gale, the weight
of ice, the lightning and its hurricane kin.
If you are blessed enough to truly see them--
if you find yourself cooled
in their unfelled shadows--
then allow yourself a brief moment
to taste their faded wooden might,
to touch their dry heartbeats. Listen
with storied reverence to their mourning songs
creaking through the days and nighttime,
witness the stars winking between
spindly fingers that once held the colors
of springtime and mundane tragedies
preparing for the fall. The dead trees
remain, holding on to their kingdoms
a short while longer, their decay
still a part of all elemental harmony
and the perch of luminous birdsong.
See them, as silhouettes, an orange moon circling
reverently behind their historic demise—weathered bodies
of warp and frantic reach, dancing with old familiarities
riding the wind. Ancient monarchs all—having extended
their arms, capturing the sun, while untold lesser seeds
stunted in desperate dark mold, beneath scatters
of leafy cellular dust. When you see dead trees, remember:
they have spanned slow unfoldings of time, tasted
the lives of thousands upon thousands--
brethren, beasts, fungi and insect hordes. And
they have tasted the remains of us. They knew,
and were quietly satiated. Beyond rooted earth,
they’ve endured green breeze-stirrings
while casting themselves skyward, gorging
on light and air, passionate for conversion,
all the while sending their spiraling, hungry dreams
deep and wide, drinking ardently
from the cold veins beneath them,
their rough skins laughing
at ephemeral springs and droughts
of unkindness. They have fed, flowered,
forgiven--fearing only the gale, the weight
of ice, the lightning and its hurricane kin.
If you are blessed enough to truly see them--
if you find yourself cooled
in their unfelled shadows--
then allow yourself a brief moment
to taste their faded wooden might,
to touch their dry heartbeats. Listen
with storied reverence to their mourning songs
creaking through the days and nighttime,
witness the stars winking between
spindly fingers that once held the colors
of springtime and mundane tragedies
preparing for the fall. The dead trees
remain, holding on to their kingdoms
a short while longer, their decay
still a part of all elemental harmony
and the perch of luminous birdsong.