New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the 9-11 tree symbolizes the city and country's resilience, discovered in the rubble in October 2001 with snapped roots and a blackened trunk. The Callery pear tree measured about eight feet high when it was taken to a Parks Department nursery in the Bronx and nursed back to health, now standing about 30 feet high
Writer Teresa Starcher of Little Creek was moved after seeing a photo of the highly damaged tree, and penned this poem:
TREE OF DEATH
By Teresa Starcher
Was the first seal opened upon this dayspring?
The spirit of anti-Christ has walked among us
Embodied by a paroxysm of Satan
The coiled scourge had struck
Its fangs spit demonic poison
When acrid fumes
The breath of Lucifer
Spewed forth the clouds of hell
Yet
Behold a lone silhouette
Against the background of the torrid smoke
Amid the dingy gray fog
The soot of incinerated life filtering down
Like snow
Stands the stark outline
Its leafless branches a testimony to the blight of mankind
In such contrast to God's wondrous tree
This living thing
Alive!
Amidst the throes of death
Exchanged its latent buds
For the torrent reams billowing down
Their sheets
Fashion leaves of paper
This nature's sculpture
Has also been clothed in coverings
Unneeded now by the cloak of death
Fearfully
Trembling
Scenes of carnage and destruction
So near
Yet so far to God's presence>br>
One may doubt the Dispensation of Grace
Yet the soul
Pleads it so
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