Singing an Elegy in the Sumac

I had this favorite sumac that I used to climb when I was little. It was the tallest and thickest one out of the grove. It was just beyond our property line on a small gorge that dipped down into the crick that ran down from the ledge and then alongside our lawn and the neighbor’s.

I could sit between the two wishbone-shaped branches perfectly like I was the corner piece that the slender tree had been missing until I found it.

It was different from the spruce that I climbed where my father buried our first dog, Smokey beneath; different than the purple maple that Uncle Alex had to trim and cover the nubs with tar because it was diseased. When I seated myself in the sumac, it was as though I sat on the very edge of something I knew everything about and nothing about.

The tree’s branches, like forearm-thick jump ropes, allowed me to swing, sway, and sing over this line. At any minute they could snap. I could have broken my neck. But, that feeling of being in control and out of control, at the same time, can never be reproduced beyond the climbing of that sumac. It was naturally dark.