Freaky perfection

When he wrote “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree,” Joyce Kilmer was surely not thinking about this oddly endearing palm in Elysian Park -- the one with a trunk that runs some 20 feet along the ground before bending skyward. No, this benchlike tree is more along the lines of e.e. cummings: twisted and improbable, yet proof that nature makes no mistakes.

Just above the fountains and gardens of the Grace E. Simons Lodge on Elysian Park Drive, the palm is part of a trio of trees atop a grassy hill that offers a 360-degree vista of the greenery in L.A.’s second-largest public park.

After the short but cardio-intensive trek up the knoll, a visitor will find the long, low trunk of the tree carved with lovers’ names is a particularly inviting perch. Best seat in the house? A worn-flat section engraved with “Nichole + Bobby.”

When you’ve caught your breath, follow the line of the bearded bench as it traces the hilltop before pointing up, toward a view that will take your breath away once again: a shimmering cluster of downtown office towers that actually suggests a proper skyline.

-- David A. Keeps