A Deep River Year - 2017

Joe had an idea of something beautiful. It was his town, the place he had grown up, a place of hills and hollows and a magnificent river. Mostly, it was a place of people, and his family contributed their share of them. Joe was the ninth of thirteen brothers and sisters, and he and his wife counted on thirteen grandchildren to love this small town as much as they did. Joe came back here after serving his country in the Army Air Force, and later became First Selectman, the highest elected office in a small New England town. As mayor, he tried to give back something to the place that he had always called home. He got the town to buy land for a park and swimming hole, helped get senior housing started, and spurred the renovation of a lovely theater and auditorium on the top floor of the old three-sided town hall.


But it is his trees that keep Joe in my heart. The beautiful flowering pear trees that line Main Street were Joe's special gift to us. Joe was a tree man, and he grew them on his farm. He could walk through town and tell you something about every tree he encountered. He found a few "grandfather trees" that he claimed were the only specimens of their variety in the State. In retirement, he filled his farm with balsams and spruces and sold cut-them-yourself Christmas trees. Weekends in December you could find him sitting by a bonfire just down the hill from his house, watching the kids run through the fields looking for just the right tree for their holiday living room, their fathers plodding after them, out of breath, with a handsaw on the ready. He would watch with a sparkle in his eye as those kids ate charred hot dogs and made marshmallows into torches in the fire, then offered him one in thanks.


His life was his thanks for a good, good life. This Sunday afternoon we will say good-bye to Joe for the last time, and we'll remember how a town is a tree, too, where we are all connected branches, roots deep in common soil. And that afternoon, while the old veterans fire their salute and the sound of Taps carries through the center of our town, those pear trees along Main Street will be paying their tribute, too, as glorious white petals flutter down on Joe's place.


Easter Green


Some say
 that the color of life
 is red, like blood
 coursing through our veins--
 or even blue,
 for the water that
 makes our little rock of a planet
 into such a miracle.
 But on an April day
 it is green,
 burgeoning, quickening,
 beckoning the world awake.
 This Easter green
 rises from the ripe earth as grass,
 quivers on the branches
 of ancient wood,
 sprouts in the mud
 where winter has lingered too long.
 It is that green which we are, too,
 could our spirits show themselves,
 hungry with hope:
 all of us, a million fingers of life
 laughing, singing,
 devouring sunlight
 in a wild banquet
 of joy,
 and making flowers as our gift.


--Timothy Haut