Daddy and I Planted a Pine Tree
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My father and I have just planted a pine sapling, and I'm very proud. I'm probably also just glad to be spending time with him. He is not dressed in the "dapper" way he used to dress but looks rather frumpy as he has a "chaw" of his Beechnut Tobacco. We planted this tree on our 5-acre hill on Cloverdale Road at the city limits of Florence, AL. My mother and daddy, before I was born, had planted a hundred acre farm in Tennessee with pines. I can't even imagine. I still love pines and remember how Mama, Daddy, my sister, and I would lie on a quilt under the pines and look up at the stars and ask impossible questions, like what is on the other side of infinity--a brick wall? Well, what is on the other side of that? And, if God was here in the beginning, who created God? Daddy said there are some questions that we can never answer, and that's called "mystery." That was a great gift he gave me: to be okay with the mystery--most of the time, anyway.
Photo Credit:
Sarah Gibbs
Copyright:
Bonnie Roberts
When I first came across Bonnie Roberts's work . . . I was absolutely, immediately exhilarated with the same kind of exhilaration as when I first opened Neruda, a sense of a whole landscape singing through a person. ”
—Paula Meehan, Irish poet, her comment on the back of Roberts's first collection, To Hide in the Light.
About Bonnie
Both my parents were teachers, who met at the University of AL. My mother eventually taught 2nd-grade reading; my father taught math, history, and political science. To improve his income, he later became a seller of insurance, not something he liked, but...
Connections
Causes Bonnie Roberts Supports
The Southern Poverty Law Center, The National Resource Defense Council, The ACLU, Doctors without Borders, Save Darfur
Bonnie’s Favorite Books
To Kill a Mockingbird; The Poisonwood Bible; The Star Thrower; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Holy the Firm; One Hundred Years of Solitude; Leaves of Grass; Les...