Saturday Photo: Not Just Maples and Oaks and etc.

Everything starts growing this time of year.  Here is a photo of the brilliant new growth on a deciduous tree.  Don't know the name--I'm not good with those of plants--but I'm struck by the power of renewal in plants.

Reminds me of the title and first line of Dylan Thomas's poem The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower. The rest is rather like those brilliant still-lives of fruit and flowers that always show some decay to remind us of our mortality. 

Better on a spring day to think of the force, not the end of the force.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.