Shadows and Tall Trees (cover)

I did not intend for this to be confessional, but it turned out that way.
Tonight, I was trying to find a song to sing, something that I haven’t already done,
and I remembered the name of a song called, Shadows and Tall Trees by U2.
In the course of recording the song, I remembered and drew upon being a teenager
(though my English teacher preferred that I be called a young adult)
I was suicidal from a very very young age.
I would walk the streets of my hometown a lot, at night.
Just loving all the foliage along the boulevards..
I always took a rest at a dying tree in a field.
It split off, one part alive because a bird or squirrel happened to
leave a nut or seed there, and another tree grew out of the dying one.
I would always be sad, trying to close my eyes, and meditate,
trying to listen just listen listen to as far away as I could,
and once I swore I heard a dog miles and miles away barking.
I couldn’t play guitar at all at the time, I had a bad ear for music.
Later on in college, I painted that tree, time and time again, paintings
prints you name it.. I called that tree, ‘the HandTree’
and that is the cover for this post..
I can see it still in my mind’s eye, even though it was cut down decades ago.
So check out the song,
‘do you feel in me, anything redeeming?
any worthwhile feeling?
is life a tightrope hanging from my ceiling?
I know, I know,
Shadows and Tall Trees’
– Bono

HandTree, 1992