I do not know how old our redbud was.
I know I have no memory of my childhood home without it,
and no memory of it small.

I remember countless days playing beneath it,
gathering its long pods into piles,
thinking them debris,
ungrateful for the miracle of life they held within.

I remember Jennifer of Abbashagh lounging beneath it
in my teen-age years, our gentle but protective Afghan hound,
nearly 6 feet long from outstretched toes to tail,
her coat black as her eyes that danced for joy.

I remember its blazing pink glory heralding countless springs,
its heart-shaped leaves shading me for hours
as I lay beneath it, my head against its trunk, a book in my hands.

Do I remember seeing it start to fail
when I returned home for visits after moving away?
Or is that a trick of memory?
Am I projecting on it my own lifespan in that home,
imagining it languished with me no longer there?

Botany tells me that Eastern redbuds
live 20 to 25 years. That may be so.
Measured in memory,
mine lives on still.