Category / Trees

by John

Among Trees

Over the years, I have wondered why it is that so many of us are drawn to nature. I think of my own experiences of entering a forest, climbing a mountain, wading into the ocean, and the strange sense of presence, of being taken into, of being embraced, that overtakes one. Discreet experiences come to mind: Walking slowly in a forest of balsam fir and deciduous trees in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec; Pausing among a cluster of mesquite and acacia trees in the Sonoran Desert; Walking through a grove of whispering pine overlooking the Indian Ocean in South Africa; Climbing up into a tall Syringa tree in Pretoria; Ambling along a dirt road under a line of Blue Gums in Australia; Climbing the treeless Beenoskee mountain above Ireland’s Lake Annascaul; Joining the Buckeye Trail not far from our Hudson home to stroll among, hickory, maple, beech and pine.

Ours is largely an anthropocentric culture, one that views humankind as separate from and superior to nature; a perspective that views non-human entities such as animals, plants and minerals as resources for us to use. It is a culture marked by the impulse to dominate. And, in our daily lives, we are caught up in a struggle between the urge to dominate and resistance to being dominated. And, somehow, this drive has a dehumanizing effect. That is why perhaps, when we enter the forest, we abandon this destructive dichotomy to find a peaceful harmony at one with nature: A non-verbal awareness.

by John

Among Oaks

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, ‘In the Shelter of a Weeping Beech,’ Jesse Wegman wrote about his mother who “loved all trees, but this weeping beech was her favorite. It’s hard to describe the experience of being in its presence, but she tried. In the journal she kept while she was sick, she wrote that the tree appeared to her ‘as a herd of elephants huddled together, pressing their massive bodies together, with their trunks entwined.’

Only a few months earlier, I had a similar experience standing in a grove of oak trees and tried to capture it by creating the photographic diptych displayed above. I then wrote some poetic narrative to accompany the image. Here it is:

It was strange

walking under the trees beside the lake

to find myself surrounded and embraced

by a grove of towering old oaks

in the dusty dusk of twilight

as if I had wandered in among

a herd of elephants swaying where they stood

somehow welcoming me

to share the silence of a summer evening

 

by John

Among the Trees

In the style of Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees
especially the acacia and mesquite,
the cottonwood and willow,
in the bosque beside the desert wash,
silently welcomed home –
a family member after a long absence,
shedding the fictions of my other self,
the painfully sustained deceit…
It has been so long, though only yesterday:
Home again with these old friends,
sharing their breathing space,
standing in the intensity of the moment
beside the softly bending winter grass
under the welcoming arms
of gnarled old branches that reach out
in a gesture of embrace.
Words take flight like the startled hawk
flycatcher, finch, or sparrow,
alarmed at my footfall,
who flutter away leaving a silence
where the giant granite boulder lies,
unmoved for a hundred years or more
since tumbling down the mountainside
to settle in among the agave and saguaro
for me to lean on, rooted as we are
in this place.

by John

You Should Sit Under A Jacaranda

You should sit
under a jacaranda tree
in late spring
when dappled light
dances on bare arms
and the violet mantilla
draped loosely overhead
ripples softly in the breeze
shaking off spent blossoms
that float down
covering the earth
in a miracle sprinkling 
like spring-time snow             
indigo-tinged flakes
bathed in hues of twilight blue
flowers even as they die
holding us in their clasp
pungent as damp moss
and sweetly fragrant
sweet as honey from the bees
that in the lattice lace overhead
still buzz vibrato
their universal hum.
In this place where you sit
suspended between effulgence and decay
patiently between birth and death
there is for this moment
no space for fear regret or pain