The tragic tree is the magic tree

I have not been privileged to handle mistletoe, but I know it is a sacred & magical plant. This piece honors it and makes me consider what's dying & growing in the season. Enjoy!

Planting Mistletoe

Let the old tree be the gold tree;

Hand up the silver seed:

Let the hoary tree be the glory tree,

To shine out at need,

At mirth-time, at dearth-time,

Gold bough and milky bead.

For the root's failing and the shoot's failing;

Soon it will bloom no more.

The growth's arrested, the yaffle's nested

Deep in its hollow core:

Over the grasses thinly passes 

The shade so dark before.

Save a few sprigs of the new twigs,

If any such you find:

Don't lose them, but use them,

Keeping a good kind

To be rooting and fruiting

When this is old and blind.

So the tragic tree is the magic tree,

Running the whole range

Of growing and blowing

And suffering change:

Then buying, by dying,

The wonderful and strange.

~Ruth Pitter