We see ourselves in them. We lean on them for classes on the best way to be extra human and what resilience means. They are our timekeepers, our spirit guides, our kin.
I spend a whole lot of time in a primeval forest with timber centuries older than me. Trees beneath which 1000’s of different individuals have walked on toes which can be now not there, carrying their sorrows and their desires in hearts that at the moment are earth. Trees which have witnessed world wars and weddings, which have grown since earlier than we constructed the bomb and deciphered the human genome, earlier than Einstein got here up with the idea of relativity and Nina Simone got here up with “Mississippi Goddam”, a few of whom have been alive when Bach was alive.
I typically surprise what they might say if they may discuss. But perhaps they would not say something in any respect – perhaps they might communicate a fact past phrases.
That’s a bit nearer Dorian Laux intimates in her stunning poem ‘The Life of Trees’, present in her assortment Only when the day is long: new and selected poems (public Library) and skim right here to the sound of cellist and composer Zoë Keating’s piece “Optimist” from her transcendent file In the trees.
THE LIFE OF TREES
by Dorianne LauxThe pines rub their nice sound
within the littered darkish, crabs
their itchy branches in opposition to the home,
and the thriller of the moans roughly interprets
in rut of property: time
to pull the ladder out of the shed,
climb onto the roof with a noticed
between my tooth, reduce
these suckers down. What is the fact
if not a protracted exhausting cringe
of the blade, the tooth? I need to sleep
and dream the lifetime of timber, creatures
from the hushed world that cares
nothing for cash, politics, energy,
Will of Right, who need little of the evening
however a number of useless stars that exit, a white owl
lifting their limbs, who solely need to
to sink their roots into the moist floor
and scare the worms or shake
their blurry heads like mannequins
or outdated hippies. If timber may communicate
they would not, simply hum a bit of softly
inexperienced nut, roll their pine cones
by the empty streets and blame it,
shrugging, to the chilly wind.
During the day they sleep indoors
shred their furry bark, clouds
like outdated lace over their crowns.
Sun. Rain. Snow. Wind. They are afraid of
nothing however the hurricane and hearth,
that overwhelmed bully standing up
and turns into his personal useless father.
In the storms the younger
bend and bend and know the outdated
they might not make it, go down
with the ability traces sparking,
damaged within the trunk. They throw
their branches, forked sacrifice
to the overwhelmed earth. They do not pray.
If they make a noise, it is eaten
by the wind. And although the celebs
return, they simply do not supply thanks
ooze a sticky juice from their roundish
concentric wounds, straighten their backbone
and breathe, and breathe once more.
Complete with the poem ‘When I Am Among the Trees’ by Mary Oliver and ‘Trees at Night’ by Helene Johnson, then revisit Hermann Hesse’s poetic, age-old love letter to timber.
