love this sycamore because it's lovely. and because it's a tree like all old trees, of memory.
when i was more or less nine there was a little patch of earth left between subdivisions and strip mall. i don't know why they called it a strip mall, there was no main strip, just a dusty country road, and no strip club. but there was this fertile patch where my imagination grew, and there was a great big old dead sycamore laying across the creek and an old iron railroad bridge, the rails gone. i took the rusty iron sign off of it. that too is long gone. the memory is still fresh. i can still feel the bark, and the rusty skeleton bridge on my fingertips.