I finally had the maple tree in my front yard removed last summer. It was too big for the space, it kept the grass from growing, and the roots were threatening to crack my new driveway. I knew some day the limbs were going to take down the power lines to the house. Plus, every fall that maple dropped leaves all over the yard. So I paid an itinerant tree crew to remove it.
A month later I slipped on a wet leaf and broke my ankle in three places. Coincidence? I think not. I think the trees in the back yard heard the cries of distress as their colleague headed for the wood chipper and took their revenge when the opportunity presented.
The following poem speaks to cutting down a tree and also is a fine poem for a snowy winter day.
In winter in the woods alone
Against the trees I go.
I mark a maple for my own
And lay the maple low.
At four o’clock I shoulder axe
And in the afterglow
I link a line of shadowy tracks
Across the tinted snow.
I see for Nature no defeat
In one tree’s overthrow
Or for myself in my retreat
For yet another blow.
Robert Frost
