Mielikki and The Aspen/Poplar Tree and Me

 

 

 

We move through the Autumn Equinox and the aspen trees shiver to their roots.  The aspen tree leaves, in ancient Celtic burial grounds, were believed to be layered there to symbolize rebirth that the aspen tree (known as well as the poplar tree) displays every spring.  The Greek were said to wear crowns of aspen leaves when they went to war and were headed out to battle.  In some ways, it was believed that the leaves were protection, in fact, the Celts made their shields of aspen wood which was thought to be protection, spiritually, as well as physically. 

I grew up with great poplar trees around my childhood home.  In fact, before my five adoptive step brothers went to England, as pilots, in WWII, they carved their names in the corner poplar tree.  Many times I climbed up high enough to be near DeVoe’s carved name.  DeVoe never came home but the tree carried his name higher and higher each year and I climbed higher and higher.  I wrote a poem, once, about climbing that tree up above the clouds, high enough to touch heaven where my brother was.  I wept when the tree became too high and became a danger to our house and Dad had the tree cut down.  I sought out the chunk that had his name carved in it and it had already been destroyed.  I wept unconsolably and could not get anyone to understand how important it was to me to have his name standing guard over us.  I had, and still have, a very deep connection to those trees.   

In this painting, you see the aspen/poplar leaves of fall.  The portrait is Mielikki, Finnish goddess of forests and trees.  Finland forests are central to all of life there.  They honored the goddess Mielikki because she was thought to protect the people and their cattle and the animals and herbs and the berries of the forest which they depended upon.  She was believed to be the one to heal animals and to share the herbs of healing the people needed. 

I have often written poetry about the connection, the symbolism, of woman and tree.  But this is a poem, new to me, that strikes me soul deep. 

A Young Woman, A Tree

Passing that fiery tree—if only she could
      Be making love,
      Be making poetry,      
      Be exploding, be speeding through the universe
      Like a photon, like a shower
      Of yellow blazes— 
  She believes if she could only overtake
      The riding rhythm of things,
      Of her own electrons,
      Then she would be at rest
      If she could forget school,
      Climb the tree,
      Be the tree,
      Burn like that.
She doesn’t know yet, how could she
      That this same need
      Is going to erupt every September
      And that in 40 years the idea will strike her
      From no apparent source,
      In a Laundromat
      Between a washer and a dryer,
      Like one of those electric light bulbs
      Lighting up near a character’s head in a comic strip—
      There in that naked and soiled place
      With its detergent machines,
      Its speckled fluorescent lights,
      Its lint piles broomed into corners as she fumbles for quarters
      And dimes, she will start to chuckle and double over
      Into the plastic baskets’
      Mountain of wet      
      Bedsheets and bulky overalls—
      Old lady! She’ll grin,
      beguiled at herself,

      Old lady! The desire to burn is already a burning! How about that!

-Alice Ostriker

In this painting, I honor all that the Poplar/Aspen tree means to me, and the painted prayer I offer to Mielikki

©Carol Desjarlais 23/10/20