…A dream I had
Of a world all mad.
Not a simple happy mad like me,
Who am mad like an empty scene
Of water and willow tree,
Where the wind hath been;
But that foul Satan-mad,
Who rots in his own head,
And counts the dead

–Walter de la Mare, “The Fool Rings His Bells”

We knew it was going to be bad when the tree hit the house. There’d been nearly foot of rain in the last week. The ground was so saturated that the first blast of wind the front in a train of storms uprooted the willow I’d planted twenty years ago, toppling the 30-foot-tall tree. Fortunately for us, being a golden-leaved member of the Salix family the tree, a favorite foraging spot for sapsuckers and woodpeckers that was just beginning to provide cooling late summer shade from the afternoon sun, made a willowy landing and........

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