The sketch opens with a direct address, almost a prayer, to an aged and hollow tree. AZR sees in it not a dying tree but a house of life: a colony of bees nests within it and sweetens the sufferings of its old age.
"Peace be upon you in abundance, tree ancient of days, moss-covered and hollow of belly! I see that your sufferings are many, the sufferings of old age; yet a colony of toiling bees has nested in you, and they sweeten for you the bitterness of life." AZR, "Man Is a Tree of the Field," Pirkei Zikhronot (1934/5).
The tree stirs a memory in AZR: his beloved grandfather, to whom he was bound "with every fiber of my soul," in the days when he himself was still a "tender sapling." The image continues, and the grandfather becomes a second tree, poor and modest, carrying within him a treasure of honey.
"Ah, tree! You remind me of a certain old man, my dear grandfather, to whom I was bound with every fiber of my soul, in the days when I myself was still a tender sapling…" Ibid.
"Like you, tree, my grandfather was poor and modest, and like you he had a treasure of sweet honey. His heart, his hive, was full of sweet wisdom." Ibid.
The bees, in the sketch, are the old man's thoughts: they fly beyond seas and islands, to "the wondrous flowers that do not wither even in autumn," and bring him a nectar of serenity and hope.
"And from the Garden of Eden they would bring my grandfather a nectar of purity, and then a radiance of calm and quiet lit up his delicate, wrinkled face; and the hope of eternal life delighted his pure, tender spirit." Ibid.
Most of AZR's writing is discursive, moral, or historical. "Man Is a Tree of the Field" reveals another side: lyrical, personal writing that allows itself an extended, musical image. It also joins the family memory he cultivated throughout Pirkei Zikhronot, at whose center stand the figures of the grandfathers from Lyady.