When a Tree Falls
Eulogy For a Leafy Friend | Non-Fiction | Sour Soup
A person should have one friend to trust, one animal to talk to when he feels alone, one sidewalk bench to sit on when she gets tired, and one tree to stare at and remember that he’s a part of something, something larger, something that existed here long before him and will continue to sprout green leaves long after he’s gone. My one tree was the Poinciana that I could see from the balcony of the apartment that’s been my home for thirty-three years. According to neighborhood lore, the tree was planted roughly seventy years ago by Ayin Hillel, a famous Israeli children’s author and poet, in return for a room he rented in the adjacent building. It was a good tree to stare at, a wonderful tree to spot through a taxi window on my way back from distant lands, a perfect tree to remind me that I was home.
Last week, the Poinciana tree fell, knocking down a utility pole and breaking a fence on its way. A neighbor said that the building’s residents used to call in someone to prune the tree every three years, but what with the war and everything else, no one remembered to do it. The things people forget when fear reigns: to call an old friend, to stroke a cat, to sit on a bench for a few moments. To stare at a tree.
In memory of my Poinciana friend, here’s an old post I wrote about it back in the day, when it still stood strong.
If A Tree Falls
Our street might be the most boring street in Tel Aviv. It has no shops, almost no car traffic, and the residents are suspiciously peaceful. Unlike in other parts of town, here you’ll almost never find people arguing about livelihood, politics or vaccinations. Absent genuine disagreements, the main cause of drama is tree-pruning. Or, to be more accurate…
This hits home today. We’ve been warned we’re likely to lose a massive hundred-year-old tree on our neighbor’s property this fall. It’s immense, majestic, but a couple of big branches fell unexpectedly and the tree people said they were rotted almost hollow and that the whole thing has to go. Our neighbors, when they moved in, were told the tree had at most 10 years to live; it’s been 40. But does that mean we should accept its fate or that tree people don’t have a clue? I struggle.
After living in our wonderful NJ home for 50 years — a home filled with beautiful memories, a home in which we raised our children and welcomed our grandchildren — we have relocated (8/13/26) to a lovely apartment surrounded by stress-relieving trees, in upstate NY, off the towpath for the Erie Canal. What a gift!
A bit of humor: T-shirt I bought for my husband: “If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?” It’s a rhetorical question.