After a recent tree donation from the Anchorage Garden Club & planting ceremony, our students wanted to reflect on the experience and symbolic nature of trees through writing poems. Please enjoy these original poems by students currently undergoing treatment in our residential units!

Trees can be like treatment
And treatment helps me grow
Trees start as seeds,
Seeds grow by light and water
To much water will kill it
Just like to much darkness will make it pale
And seeds need light, but too much light will dry it out.
Just like to much light will hurt your eyes.
Then the seed grows into tree sapling
With care it won’t despair.
Just like treatment. You need care.
Then it is full grown after many years of caring.
Just like treatment, it helps me grow.
Trees can be like treatment.

To me a tree symbolizes life
The growth of the tree is a little like the growth in me
As a tree grows taller, I get smaller, and when the leaves
fall off and the trees take a break, I become stronger because
I have to rake. And when the leaves grow back all bright green
I become less grumpy and mean. And that’s what a tree is to me.

Some days I grow and some days I don’t,
through harsh winters, through abundant springs. My future is
tall and bright for I never stop growing, for I never stop providing, for I never stop being me.
What is a tree?
What does it mean? It gives the air I breathe
and provides the beauty I see.
It’s a symbol of life that grows with me, to the highest height
that we can only imagine to be.
It starts as a seed as time goes by it becomes a tree.
Then provides for others just like me.
We take it for granite and don’t even see, as time goes by
we will eventually be free.
Just like this tree.

Trees are green.
Trees are life. Take this tree and let it grow.
This is the symbol of new beginnings .Take this tree and don’t
Let go. Trees make the air we breathe. They sustain life not take it.
Love the tree as it grows. Let this new sapling grow to be big and
Strong, tall and sturdy, and nice and green

Roses are red
Violets are blue,
They grow and change as we do here.
They start off small but they grow to be great.
All grow to their beauty, they are always a treat,
They come greatly wanted.

Poem
The tree represents your life taking ground
and growing for many to come.

Trees don’t really symbolize anything for me, there
Just trees to me. But for other people trees might symbolize their growth in life