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202 The Arborist She was obviously a Mourning Dove tipping her tail down before landing in the upper limbs and the spring-sprung leafing out that marks with crayon green the empty spaces gardeners opened late last fall when for the first time in twenty years that tree was trimmed. I didn’t have to look to know how she came to land. She made the sound that Mourners make, a swirl of silvery whistles as she flew into the tree top whose stub-ended branches spread wide in a half-circle. They were shaped by the trimmers to likewise fill out fan-like so the crown’s profusion of leaves would bloom into a perfect bouquet. I didn’t need to look to know the cut limbs weren’t pointed like the fingers on a hand. This I learned by painting trees in the style of Chinese brush paintings. At first, I drew the ends of the branches out into fine tips, but my teacher—and then the trees I started to observe with skill—showed me that branches bulb out at the end, thicken where the growth comes from. But when I turned at the sound of wings again, the bird disappearing from the boughs, only the joy of it was such a surprise. ...

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