Wind in a Beech Tree

I so love the limerick form that I sometimes attempt to write serious work using it. Here's one that looks as if it dates from 2013. The class I mention was real—a law professor who recited for the length of the session and expected us to take verbatim notes. I would alternate writing at the top and the bottom of the page to keep my mind from drifting. It would drift anyway, and I would look out at the trees, shifting in the wind. I'm posting it here because, once again, I'm trying to solve the cover image conundrum, and thought I'd use another tree image. It's from the same series of images as the one I tried to post yesterday. Maybe this one will take.

There once was a window of limbs—

mussed with leaves, in my memory, most times—

      where I watched the wind sport

            with the tenderer parts

of a beech tree that reached me its arms.

I was young, and my heart found delight

in spring dreams. Making love, making light.

      But I studied the law!

            I prepared myself for

life's strictures, its tightening knots.

A professor of torts thissed and thosed.

I half-heard. Not that my eyes closed:

      there were ditties of light,

            and of leafed limb, I might

have missed, had I yielded and dozed.

There twice was a bird that flew false

and rapped at the room's plate glass walls.

       But right as it knocked,

            I'd looked off, to my book—

or the lectern—anyway, somewhere else—

and was jarred back just too late to see.

All that stirred were the limbs of my tree,

      wind-ruffled, serene,

            painting all they touched green;        

wind-chiming the ruckus from me.

More than three times that age now am I,

and I still love the wind's lullaby

            in the leaves. And am left

            tossed and soothed and bereft

by its spell, in the world's rap and cry.

(More than four times that age now, in fact. But I'll leave the OG text intact. Aaargghhh! I'm still doing it! Make me stop!)