Category: trees

Awaiting the Whole Story

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moody1111

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I prefer winter and fall,
when you feel the bone structure of the landscape–
the loneliness of it,
the dead feeling of winter. 
Something waits beneath it,
the whole story doesn’t show.
~Andrew Wyeth

This time of year I am,
like the trees,
reduced to bare bones,
stark and vulnerable.
The cold wind of winter
buffets with bitter fingers.

Yet hope courses like sap
moving inside wooden veins,chilled and sluggish.
Waiting to waken, budding,
tips of naked limbs,
it hints at a story
yet to reach fruition.

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Take the Next Step

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At sundown when a day’s words
have gathered at the feet of the trees
lining up in silence
to enter the long corridors
of the roots into which they
pass one by one thinking
they remember the place
as they feel themselves climbing
away from their only sound
while they are being forgotten
by their bright circumstances
they rise through all the rings
listening again
afterward as they
listened once and they come
to where the leaves used to live
during their lives but have gone now
and they too take the next step
beyond the reach of meaning
~ W. S. Merwin “To a Leaf Falling in Winter”

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One Fir Unyielding

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A silence slipping around like death,
Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh,
a breath; One group of trees, lean,
naked and cold,
Inking their cress ‘gainst a
sky green-gold;

One path that knows where the
corn flowers were;
Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
And over it softly leaning down,
One star that I loved ere the
fields went brown
~Angelina Weld Grimke “A Winter Twilight”

Our farm’s lone fir is a focal point of the neighborhood,
standing grand on the highest hill for several miles around.

Raptors use this tree for views of the surrounding fields.
The horses love the shade on hot summer days.
It is backdrop for glorious sunsets and rising moons.

Yet in winter I find myself admiring it most —
Its steadfast presence, so stoic and unyielding
though buffeted by cold wind and icy storms.

Decades of seasons flow past the lone fir,
“silence slipping around like death,
yet chased by a whisper, a sigh,
a breath.”

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

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Rekindling the Burning Bush

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When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distanceand said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Exodus 20: 18-19

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave.  It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind.  The very holy mountains are keeping mum.  We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind use to cry and the hills sing forth praise?
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk

We push God away, not wanting to see His fire, smell the smoke of His burning branches, nor feel the singe of our own eyelashes by His heat.  In our discomfort, we fail to listen to His voice coming from the fire.  So we have doused it, quenched our longing for Him by our fear of submitting to Him.

And we cannot relight the burning bush ourselves;  it is rekindled only by His ignition through His incarnation — God With Us invites us back to the mountain, onto Holy Ground, to face Him.

Once again we can hear the wind cry and the hills sing forth praise by listening for the voice of God Himself.

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To Win the Sky

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The tree is more than first a seed,
then a stem,
then a living trunk,
and then dead timber.
The tree is a slow,
enduring force
straining to win the sky.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands

And so should we be
so much more than mere life cycle:
we are infinite variety
and fascinating diversity,
clothed in finery
yet naked and vulnerable,
we lift burdens in our arms
and harbor the frail,
dig our roots deep
and hold fast,
shade those overcome,
and sing in the breeze.
Most of all
we aim high,
to touch a sky
beyond our grasp.

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Harvest Test

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woods24
Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested –
this sorrow, that great love –
it too will leave on that clean knife.
–Jane Hirshfield from “The October Palace”
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The Changeless Seal of Change

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moody1111
The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.
The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.
And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain
Loveliness.
~John Updike from “A Child’s Calendar”
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sistersfence

Yea, I have looked, and seen November there;
The changeless seal of change it seemed to be,
Fair death of things that, living once, were fair;
Bright sign of loneliness too great for me,
Strange image of the dread eternity,
In whose void patience how can these have part,
These outstretched feverish hands, this restless heart?
~William Morris, “November”

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Bare November

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My Sorrow, when she’s here with me…

She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days…
~Robert Frost from “My November Guest”

November,
month of darkening,
now transformed
to a recounting of gratitude
of daily thanksgiving and blessings~~

it is good to dwell on our gifts,
even so,
I invite Sorrow
to sit in silence with me,
her tears blending with mine.

These deepening days
of bare stripped branches
feed my growing need
for the covering grace
of His coming light.

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Moody Dusk

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I’m out here in the dusk…

There is no one home but me—
and I’m not at home; I’m up here on the hill,
looking at the dark windows below.
Let them be dark…

…night has silenced
the last loud rupture of the calm.
~Jane Kenyon from “Frost Flowers”

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