Suburban Dryad

My previous poem of Sunday November 27, 2011  -

Passages 

The crows settle in, 

the girl on the swing is gone, 

the tree carries on. 

- is no longer operative.

Suburban Dryad*

The girl reappears 

older and swinging higher 

attached to the tree. 

* Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies "oak", from an Indo-European root *derew(o)- "tree" or "wood". Thus Dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general.   Dryads, like all nymphs, were supernaturally long-lived and tied to their homes, but some were a step beyond most nymphs. These were the Hamadryads who were an integral part of their trees, such that if the tree died, the Hamadryad associated with it died as well. For these reasons, Dryads and the Greek gods punished any mortals who harmed trees without first propitiating the tree-nymphs.