Editor's Note: As the pandemic drags on, we turn to nature, photography and writing for solace. The Times has decided to open up space occasionally for residents to share some of their creativity. Email photos and poems to l.howard@theday.com, and tell us something about yourself.

Clusters of children fall from the sky

Bounce, roll, scatter

Squirrels feast bury the rest

Seeds nest

Tiny strings marry the ground

Grow more plentiful

Secure the base

Shoots form, seek the light

Roots bore deeper the tree grows taller

For decades this mammoth rises

Sixty feet tall and as broad

Every year lives its life of change

Bud to leaf, green to yellow

Sends parachutes of color downward

To create autumn’s carpet

Abides cold to revive and begin anew

Scores old, the oak begins to wither

Limbs yield under the weight of the snow

A last gift to the forest,

Homes for insects, nutrition for the soil

The dry trunk residences for woodpeckers

Her children fill the ground anew

With their progenies

Rich beds await them

The womb for the next generation

A life space for the new babies,

Eternal life for the tree

Matthew Borrelli is a retired teacher living at Black Point in Niantic with his wife Andrea, also a retired teacher, and their dachshund Roweena. “I’ve always been an outdoor person,” he writes, “but due to a medical issue, I’m more confined indoors. Since I can’t busy myself with the normal chores of maintaining a house, I started writing to occupy my time.”