Aristocrat among patriarchs, this
noble mutation is the best
specimen of Rococo
in the park of the castle
at Erpenberg.
The widely-traveled Baroness
returned
from a South American expedition
with any number of plants and a few
horticultural innovations.
This trailing beech became Erpenberg's
tree of grief, their
melancholy individualist,
the park philosopher.
Eight meters above lawn
the tousled crown
rises, her many plaited branches falling
like green water
earthwards, a cascade of leaves.
The aesthetic principles
of the period: branches
pruned late to heal
into knots, proud flesh ascending
the trunk:
living architecture.
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