February 06, 2005
Meet Pando.
Older than a sequoia or bristlecone pine, it’s not just the oldest, but the largest.
Pando -- which means "I spread" in Latin -- is the perfect name for a stand of quaking aspen -- nominated a few ago as Earth's most massive living individual.
In the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, Pando weighs about six million kilograms, or 13 million pounds. It, or should I say he, has upwards of 47,000 stems -- that's 47,000 of what you and I might mistakenly perceive as separate aspen trees making up the Fishlake National Forest.
There’s bad poetry about them, but it’s hard for anyone to take a bad picture of aspens.
North America scientists studying the closely-related trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) have concluded that individual clones can survive for 10,000 years or more, making them possibly some of the longest lived organisms on the planet.
Listen to young Sarah talk about old trees--she knows what she’s talking about.
Nice link BlueHorse :)
I don't want to derail this thread if it's mainly about Aspens, but there are some other candidates for oldest tree/clones in Australia.
From this page: The Huon Pine (a stand at least 10,500 years old).
"Two specimens of the world's rarest eucalypt, the Mongarlowe Mallee (Eucalyptus recurva), which grow 40 metres apart, may be part of the same original tree. If so, they are estimated to be 13,000 years old! If not, the individuals themselves may be 3,000 years old, making them Australia's oldest trees."
Possibly the world's oldest plant (if you don't count Pando!), "King's Holly (Lomatia tasmanica), with a clonal colony possibly up to 43,000 years old".
Heh. I spread.
This reminds me of when I was trying to dig up some saplings from the wild for my garden. I don't even know what type it was but those roots went forever back to the main grove.
A very frustrating learning experience.
These links took me on a long journey into the plant kingdom.
Grand FPP, BlueHiorse!
link to amazon.com for an excellent book about trees in britain and ireland. meetings with remarkable trees is also a bbc documentary. pakenham, the book's author, has more recently published remarkable trees of the world.
i suppose there's some irony in producing expensive books about trees.
Thanks for the lovely links, BlueHorse.
I'm cuckoo for catalpas.
Islander, is it for the scent?
Meanwhile, the largest organism in the world is a 2200 acre fungus in Oregon, the delicious Honey Mushroom.
Bluehorse, although the flowers have a wonderful scent, it's more the appearance. The deep red-orange colour of the bark and the gnarled growth patterns of the limbs are really striking against the Arbutus's usual backdrop of an evergreen forest. This is particularly dramatic seen from the water when the sun is low in the sky, near sunrise or sunset. I'll see if I can find a picture to show you what I mean.
Sounds lovely, Islander.
Not only is there a fungus amongus, but it's an oldster!
Shinything, imitation is the sincerest form....
Roryk, I love fantastic tree on the cover of Trees of the World Irony is right--I can just picture both of these as coffee table books on a Brazilian hardwood table.
islander, Arbutus reminds me of Manzanita from Southern California,which has beautiful smooth, burnished, glowing, orange-red translucent bark. It's one of my favorites. I hope I get a chance to see Arbutus as well.
Strangely, in the East, neither Arbutus nor Manzanita can be found as trees but as wildflowers, Trailing Arbutus, a small uncommon woodland plant with intensely fragrant white flowers, and Bearberry, a trailing ground cover from beaches and sandy areas, respectively.
9
When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of the water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and slides away among the stones, one sees
they all have to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one's kind, toward those other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.
-- Galway Kinnell, from "When one has lived a long time alone"
Even minnows under the bridge
won't sleep alone --
one head upstream
one head downstream.
-- from Kanginshu
when fish
weep
who can
tell?
only
other fish
will
know.
slide
through deep water
salt
as human tears
fish
mute to utter
fish-dreamt
hopes and fears
)))
how did I miss a GramMa FPP?? - nice one!
The Larch.
The.
Larch.
Reginald Maulding's . . . elbow.
a new quilt
covers the mountains --
maples turn to flame
I like the willow tree. There used to be one in the front yard and its drooping branches would get so that we couldn't open the car door without them slipping inside the car. I think that tree wanted to go places.
Over my driveway, at the turnaround by the house, is a walnut tree which gives off a lot of fine droplets of tree spit when it's in leaf. Covers any vehicles below with this.
Ravens like to come and perch in that particlar tree because they can watch us put out compost from the house and food for ravens on the other side of the drive. The raven-watch cries for the others, who come flying across the valley to land and feed.
And these ravens splat. Down the driver-side door of my truck, and on the windshield. (For some reason, the other fools of my household don't like to park there, so that space gets left for my truck, which is getting old and battered but is still functional.)
Heh. Ingrate birds see to it I alway get to park closest to the house. ;]
lemon tree very pretty/
and the lemon flower is sweet/
but the fruit of the poor lemon/
is impossible to eat
Eucalyptus. I know they're not California-native, and I'm supposed to dislike them for having overrun native plants, but I used to live near a hillside grove of them (north face of Twin Peaks, above Cole Valley), and when the wind was right I'd drift off to sleep with their scent filling my bedroom (I slept with the window open then, which my girlfriend doesn't let me do now, which is something I'm realizing as I write this that I resent).
Staghorn sumac is one of my favourites. It's a short native tree, one of the few around here that looks vaguely tropical (to me). In the fall, its red leaves rival red maples. It's considered a weed by many, but I planted one in my yard to supervise the plantain, chickweed, clover and chamomile insurrection.
My tree is the guayacán (guaiacum officinalis) or Lignum Vitae. Heavy, gorgeous, scarce, noble.
It has been overharvested, almost extinct by now. You see one of those trees, and you can not but wonder about your own role in the world.
I too loved willow trees guava (we called them "weeping willows"). As a child, I was especially fond of Paper Birch trees (I did not know what they were called at the time). Our backyard had many (guessing around 20) arranged around a square-shaped garden. They were slim and tall, just right for climbing! But what I really loved was peeling off sheets of the bark and imagining that I was going to write a book. I think I scribbled some make-believe battle plans instead.
I too missed this fine GranMa FPP! Cheers bees for poking through the oldies and bringing out the goodies!
What It Is
It is madness
says reason
It is what it is
says love
It is unhappiness
says caution
It is nothing but pain
says fear
It has no future
says insight
It is what it is
says love
It is ridiculous
says pride
It is foolish
says caution
It is impossible
says experience
It is what it is
says love
-- Erich Fried
The White Pine, growing through a rocky outcrop of Canadian Shield granite, as captured by A.J. Casson.
This is the image that draws me and my canoe to Northern Ontario rivers every summer.
Some non-Canadians may not be familiar with Casson's name -- he was the last-surviving member of the Canadian Group of Painters.
Originally known as the Group of Seven, they were primarily landscape painters whose Post-Impressionist works helped to shape a visual Canadian identity.
Caring is loving, motionless,
An interval of more and less
Between the stress and the distress.
After the present falls the past,
After the festival, the fast,
Always the deepest is the last.
This is the circle we must trace,
Not spiralled outward, but a space
Returning to its starting place.
Centre of all we mourn and bless,
Centre of calm beyond excess,
Who cares for caring, has caress.
-- F(rank) R(eginald) Scott, "Caring"
mmmGuess.
*succumbs*
Well...my faceorite = poet-tree.
Curses!
favorite
favorite
favorite!
Are you related to our own H. Wingo, by any chance, crataegus?
Thread Suns
Thread suns
about the grey black wilderness. A tree-
high thought
tunes in to light's pitch: there are
still songs to be sung on the other side
of mankind.
-- Paul Celan, trans Michael Hamburger
If I become
a stone
some would become
lotus
lotus,
lake
and if I become
a lake
lake would become
lotus
lotus,
stone.
-- So Chong-ju, "If I Became a Stone", trans David R. McCann
Thanks to cherry blossom
in its shadow utter strangers --
there are none!
-- Issa, trans Harold E. Henderson
Speaking of Trees
Greg Williamson
For the tree of the field is man's life.
Deuteronomy 20:19
I'm here with some sugar maples, speaking of trees,
And they're not saying much. In spite of all
The rumors of persistent whispering,
They do not mention genealogies,
Wisdom with all its branches nor the Fall,
As if they wouldn't stand for anything.
We've made them our field representatives,
Rooted in history but branching out,
Replete with trunks, limbs, crowns and sappy hearts,
Sowing their seeds in time, shedding their leaves
In the very autumn Shakespeare writes about,
As if they were our natural counterparts.
They simply do not care, nor break their silence
On our blossoming conceit. And while I hug
Myself against the cool and breezy plain
As the brow of a storm is darkening with violence,
Look how the sugar maples seem to shrug,
Turning their palmate leaves to catch the rain.
She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine which kept
Forever trying the window-latch
Of the room where they slept;
The tireless but ineffectual hands
That, with every futile pass,
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass.
The tree had never been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid, in an oft-repeated dream,
Of what the tree might do.
--Robert Frost, "The Oft-Repeated Dream"
wind claps
the palms
together
stripped
of their leaves
they bow
they bend low
and yet
they weather
all but
the worst blows
palms = palms = groovy.
not groovy--palmate
Palm ate what?
Jane Hirshfield
Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
The Tree House
Have you seen our mulberry tree
And the neighborhood children
With purple lips and blue fingers
Climbing to the house
in its branches?
-- May Miller
Wind and Tree
In the way that the most of the wind
Happens where there are trees,
Most of the world
Is centred about ourselves.
Often where the wind has gathered
The trees together,
One tree will take
Another in her arms and hold.
Their branches that are grinding
Madly together,
It is no real fire.
They are breaking each other.
Often I think I should be like
The single tree, going nowhere,
Since my own arm could not and would not
Break the other. Yet by my broken bones
I tell new weather.
-- Paul Muldoon
Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books --
Already the first branch tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
-- Jane Hirshfield
The Tree
by Ezra Pound
I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
that grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.
Well, this is such a yarn. Paul sawed his wife
Out of a white-pine log. Murphy was there
And, as you might say, saw the lady born.
Paul worked at anything in lumbering.
He'd been bard at it taking boards away
For--I forget--the last ambitious sawyer
To want to find out if he couldn't pile
The lumber on Paul till Paul begged for mercy.
They'd sliced the first slab off a big butt log,
And the sawyer had slammed the carriage back
To slam end-on again against the saw teeth.
To judge them by the way they caught themselves
When they saw what had happened to the log,
They must have had a guilty expectation
Something was going to go with their slambanging.
Something bad left a broad black streak of grease
On the new wood the whole length of the log
Except, perhaps, a foot at either end.
But when Paul put his finger in the grease,
It wasn't grease at all, but a long slot.
The log was hollow. They were sawing pine.
"First time I ever saw a hollow pine.
That comes of having Paul around the place.
Take it to bell for me," the sawyer said.
Everyone had to have a look at it
And tell Paul what he ought to do about it.
(They treated it as his.) "You take a jackknife,
And spread the opening, and you've got a dugout
All dug to go a-fishing in." To Paul
The hollow looked too sound and clean and empty
Ever to have housed birds or beasts or bees.
There was no entrance for them to get in by.
It looked to him like some new kind of hollow
He thought he'd better take his jackknife to.
So after work that evening be came back
And let enough light into it by cutting
To see if it was empty. He made out in there
A slender length of pith, or was it pith?
It might have been the skin a snake had cast
And left stood up on end inside the tree
The hundred years the tree must have been growing.
More cutting and he bad this in both hands,
And looking from it to the pond nearby,
Paul wondered how it would respond to water.
Not a breeze stirred, but just the breath of air
He made in walking slowly to the beach
Blew it once off his hands and almost broke it.
He laid it at the edge, where it could drink.
At the first drink it rustled and grew limp.
At the next drink it grew invisible.
Paul dragged the shallows for it with his fingers,
And thought it must have melted. It was gone.
And then beyond the open water, dim with midges,
Where the log drive lay pressed against the boom,
It slowly rose a person, rose a girl,
Her wet hair heavy on her like a helmet,
Who, leaning on a log, looked back at Paul.
And that made Paul in turn look back
To see if it was anyone behind him
That she was looking at instead of him.
(Murphy had been there watching all the time,
But from a shed where neither of them could see him.)
There was a moment of suspense in birth
When the girl seemed too waterlogged to live,
Before she caught her first breath with a gasp
And laughed. Then she climbed slowly to her feet,
And walked off, talking to herself or Paul,
Across the logs like backs of alligators,
Paul taking after her around the pond.
-Robert Frost
Binsey Poplars
FELLED 1879
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All are felled, felled, all are felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering
weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew --
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
When we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins
A Dream of Trees
––Mary Oliver
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.
There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world's artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.
I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?
The Filbert Orchard
They were like old soldiers,
limbs grizzled with lichen,
the way they staggered in rows
down the hill. In spring
they sprouted sparse flags,
waved them foolishly
at the jays. Moles
at their feet carved
generations of mansions.
Rotted and aging in place,
they were those old fathers
we never had. A company
of lost men. In the backyard
at night, bare feet on the braille
of root and stone, I heard them.
Brittle shiftings, faint sounds
like cries, calls in the dark
like at Vicksberg: "Any of you boys
from Missouri? Seen my father?
my brother?"
There is snow on the distant ridge.
Sky blanketing down.
All that light! The memory of branches.
-- Diane Williams Stepp
The Flame Tree Blooms
It was you planted it;
and it grew high and put on crops of leaves,
extravagant fans; sheltered in it the spider weaves
and birds move through it.
Foa all it grew so well
it never bloomed, though we watched patiently,
having chosen its place where we could see
it from our windowsill.
Now, in its eighteenth spring,
suddenly, wholly, ceremoniously
it puts off every leaf and stands up nakedly,
calling and gathering
every capacity in it, every power,
drawing up from the very roots of being
this pulse of total red that shocks my seeing
into an agony of flower.
It was you planted it;
and I lean on the sill to see it stand
in its dry shuffle of leaves, just as we planned,
these past years feeding it.
-- Judith Wright
Polly's Tree
A dream tree, Polly's tree;
a thicket of sticks,
each speckled twig
ending in a thin-paned
leaf unlike unlike any
other on it
or in a ghost flower
flat as paper and
of a color
vaporish as frost-breath,
more finical than
any silk fan
the Chinese ladies use
to stir robin's egg
air. The silver-
haired seed of the milkweed
comes to roost there, frail
as the halo
rayed round a candle flame,
a willo'-the-wisp
nimbus, or puff
of cloud-stuff, tipping her
queer candalabrum.
Palely lit by
snuff-ruffed dandelions,
white daisy wheels and
a tiger faced
pansy, it glows. O it's
no family tree,
Polly's tree, nor
a tree of heaven, though
it marry quartz-flake,
feather and rose.
It sprang from her pillow
whole as a cobweb
ribbed like a hand,
a dream tree. Polly's tree
wears a valentine
arc of tear-pearled
bleeding hearts on its sleeve
and, crowning it, one
blue larkspur star.
-- Sylvia Plath
All life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Death: its trunk reaches up
heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe: it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-Kingdom, sit the three
Fates - the Past, Present and Future; watering its roots from the Sacred Well. It's "bough," with their buddings and disleafings, - events,
things suffered, things done, catastrophes, - stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act
or word? Its boughs are the Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. .... I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great.
- Thomas Carlyle
Igdrasil or Yggdrasil
Its branches extend over all the known worlds, and its roots extend into three of them. It's the name of Odin's Horse, referring to the time he "rode" upon the tree and learned the runes. It is also at times referred to as Hoddmimir, Tree of Mimir, and Lærád or Lerad. It is usually called an Ash tree.
Tree of Fate
Another site for the world tree
Thought Sleipnir was the name of Odin's horse.
They put oxygen in the air, in the ground, and now it seems they clean water -- wonderful plants!
Why, if these revelations keep up, I shall turn into a Weed and a Wet like yon Fotherington-Thomas: Hello, sky! Hello, trees! Hello, clouds!
Bees:
Yes, I'd heard of Sleipnir, but Yggdrasil has also been called Odin's horse.
From: Encyclopedia Mythica™
In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil ("The Terrible One's Horse"), also called the World Tree, is the giant ash tree that links and shelters all the worlds. Beneath the three roots the realms of Asgard, Jotunheim, and Niflheim are located. Three wells lie at its base: the Well of Wisdom (Mímisbrunnr), guarded by Mimir; the Well of Fate (Urdarbrunnr), guarded by the Norns; and the Hvergelmir (Roaring Kettle), the source of many rivers.
Four deer run across the branches of the tree and eat the buds; they represent the four winds. There are other inhabitants of the tree, such as the squirrel Ratatosk ("swift teeth"), a notorious gossip, and Vidofnir ("tree snake"), the golden cock that perches on the topmost bough. The roots are gnawed upon by Nidhogg and other serpents. On the day of Ragnarok, the fire giant Surt will set the tree on fire.
Other names for the tree include: Ask Yggdrasil, Hoddmimir's Wood, Laerad and Odin's Horse.
BlueHorse, I think you're both right: "Odin's Horse" is probably a kenning for the World Tree or for ash trees in general, just as "Sif's hair" was for gold or "Baldur's bane" for mistletoe.
My favourite tree grows in the far corner of New College Gardens in Oxford. It's a London plane, and if you lean against the trunk and look up into its branches, you get dizzy. I concluded from this that it was a magic tree, and spent many hours talking to it.
Thanks, BlueHorse, I learn something new every day. I like the kenning/epithet idea, Pallas Athena, very helpful, too.
Now I want a magic tree!
Lovely link, Pallas! I'd never explored the Wiki info on kennnings, and it's one of the easiest to understand explaination of kenning use I've read.
I have a magic tree that stands all by itself in a little draw way out in the desert. It's magic because it's at least 30 feet tall, and there's no other trees for at least 10 miles around it. And there's no obvious source of water--that's what's amazing. Just one tough tree growing out of the rocks.
I know a maple tree
that tosses
boomerangs of seed
so they whirl
as they dodge
my grasping hands
its shade is thick and
cooler than the ice
melting on the glass bottles
of cream the milkman leaves
on the front porches
below the maple stands
a chestnut horse
wearing a burlap nosebag
as it eats lunch
and I sit on the top step
admiring the way the horse
shudders its muscles, moving
the maple's seed cases
off its broad back
)))! I think that's my second favourite, after Darjeeling, bees.
Ooooh, Bees!
If you guys promise to keep posting in the tree thread, I'll turn over a new leaf.
I'm rooting for you, GramMa!
*GramMa reads Tick's post, staggers, grasps chest, falls onto chair, barks knee
Oh, the pain! The pain. My arms feel wooden, and my trunk aches. I think I'm having a pun-attack.
Poor GramMa- you must be bushed! Lumber on over here - maybe you've got shingles, or perhaps a-corn? I'm jes' axing 'cause you're so poplar.
That's really going out on a limb.
This is the sappiest thread ever. Cypress the urge to pun, willow you?
this thread is so larch that anyone who redwood be here all night.
only a son of a beech would disagree
Oh bees... I was ailing already, and you made me sycamore.
I'll spray that you knot be berry ill, Pallas Athena; but never fir, I'll stick a rowan till the doctor gets here.
Should you leaf, I would pine, for my heart would be bracken.
Fiends maple me in half before I wood desert yew. You have no oaken bones, I trust?
Enough! Enough! I'm aspen you to stop already!
The way a crow
Shook down on me
A dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
a change of mood
and saved some part
of a day I had rued.
ravens are a glossy black
they cannot sing a note
they chase the hawks and owls away
on ravenkind they dote
I Saw in Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
most excellent. Thanks Pallas
Luverly!
I don't think I can teak anymore of these puns n poems!
Oak-ay, oak-ay. We'll stop, since you ash-ked so nicely.
never a willow!
Trees
I am looking at trees
they may be one of the things I will miss
most from the earth
though many of the ones I have seen
already I cannot remember
and though I seldom embrace the ones I see
and have never been able to speak
with one
I listen to them tenderly
their names have never touched them
they have stood round my sleep
and when it was forbidden to climb them
they have carried me in their branches.
-- W.S. Merwin
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow
to keep an appointment with a beech-tree,
or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862
God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "Ah!"
- Joseph Campbell
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
- Kahlil Gibran
Window
I looked out the window at dawn and saw a young apple tree
transclucent in brightness.
And when I looked out at dawn once again, an apple tree laden with
fruit stood there.
Many years had probably gone by but I remember nothing of what
happened in my sleep.
Czeslaw Milosz
Fall
Trees and the white room filling with the resistance
to trees. Window windowing. Bringing I am over there
with you on the couch in its sadness of arms. Resist
the nature of being inside when outside is nature.
Trees and the white room going about unknowing
the sun. Casts a shadow of burning on the other side
of night is unsided. In the eye of the field would I be
seen if I had not the mark of my body slept there?
Clouds touched over me and I awoke to trees
just then stopping in their green the beginning
of brown. A sigh not exactly among them but close
to that "ah well it is time now to die" sound.
Or a click, some days before leaves fall, each stem
openning its valise and putting out its best dress
for the fires. Soon orange trees and the white room
singed. I could on a pyre be such brief smoke.
My ashes one more subtraction for the wind.
-- Bob Hicock
Willow
And I grew up in patterned tranquility,
In the cool nursery of the young century.
And the voice of man was not dear to me,
But the voice of the wind I could understand.
But best of all the silver willow.
And obligingly, it lived
With me all my life; its weeping branches
Fanned my insomnia with dreams.
And strange! -- I outlived it.
There the stump stands; with strange voices
Other willows are conversing
Under our, under those skies.
And I am silent. As if a brother had died.
-- Anna Akhmatova
THE GIVING TREE
Once there was a giving tree who loved a little boy.
And everyday the boy would come to play
Swinging from the branches, sleeping in the shade
Laughing all the summer’s hours away.
And so they love,
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon the boy grew older and one day he came and said,
"Can you give me some money, tree, to buy something I’ve found?"
"I have no money," said the tree, "Just apples, twigs and leaves."
"But you can take my apples, boy, and sell them in the town."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree,
"I’m now a man and I must have a house that’s all my home."
"I can’t give you a house" he said, "The forest is my house."
"But you may cut my branches off and build yourself a home"
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And time went by and the boy came back with sadness in his eyes.
"My life has turned so cold," he says, "and I need sunny days."
"I’ve nothing but my trunk," he says, "But you can cut it down
And build yourself a boat and sail away."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And after years the boy came back, both of them were old.
"I really cannot help you if you ask for another gift."
"I’m nothing but an old stump now. I’m sorry but I’ve nothing more to give"
"I do not need very much now, just a quiet place to rest,"
The boy, he whispered, with a weary smile.
"Well", said the tree, "An old stump is still good for that."
"Come, boy", he said, "Sit down, sit down and rest a while."
And so he did and
Oh, the trees was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
—Shel Silverstein
Merry...
No one's hangin' stockin's up,
No one's bakin' pie,
No one's lookin' up to see
A new star in the sky.
No one's talkin' brotherhood,
No one's givin' gifts,
And no one loves a Christmas tree
On March the twenty- fifth.
—Shel Silverstein
Aunt Leaf
Needing one, I invented her --
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.
Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,
and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,
and we'd travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker --
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish --
and all day we'd travel.
At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back
scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;
or she'd slouch from the barn like a grey opossum;
or she'd hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,
this bone dream,
this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.
-- Mary Oliver
*tilts head back till she falls over
Yeah!!!!
Sky of Sleep
Sometimes she is a tree
in the sky of my sleep,
with long branches to snag
the string or the body of me.
Sometimes I am a kite.
Held there on a hundred windy
days of summer, my edges tear
from the desire to float away.
birds pick at the string
(useful in the construction of nests),
the crucifixion of bones
against blue sleep,
and somewhere,
in a waking dream,
I make the necessary noises
like snoring to scare them off.
It is enough to be here
in her arms, secure
from drifting,
drifting away.
J.P. Dancing Bear
The Bird Tree
Come the blue dusk they
are a chattering city above you.
In the branches of a spruce,
their shrill cries like thin strips of tin,
chaffing, metal on metal,
wordless and ancient.
Your arms, which were once fins,
twitch at the sight of them.
But, you are a man;
to rise would mean hanging from a tree
for a while. And the dying part.
This is happening. Every day
your hands are sore,
and seem to glow with an x-ray's
fluorescence, flinching now
even at the turning of doorknobs.
You watch the god-step in their hop
limb to limb, and name
after name you could give them
and not understand
that purple and green iridescence
glossed over their black, enviable bodies,
the brilliant yellow of their eyes,
black, too, at the centers, and shining.
Moon like a zeppelin, bright
between the leaves, drifts east
towards a bank of storm clouds.
Excited, the birds weave thin ropes of air
around the mast of the tree,
spindled and backlit
by herds of standing stars.
You approach and the rushing
black surf lifts away. the rain,
heavy as blood, comes down
into the small
spoons of your hands.
-- D. James Smith
I got a card today. When I opened it, a pair of leaves, long with curved bubble edges, drifted out. My big brother had been walking through a reservoir with his boyfriend, saw some oak trees and thought of me. (We had been hunting for oak trees my last trip there)
It was a relatively sucky day, way too busy, but that was enough to make it worth waking up this morning (^_^)
TRAVEL PLANS
Leslie Monsour
The pepper tree spilled round us from its source,
and took a lumpish this-way, that-way course,
while dangling hopeful sprays of cinnabar.
You couldn't rest against the grizzled trunk;
its bulby hump, its knurled and craggy scar,
forced you to lean your weight on me instead.
The two of us were just a little drunk,
and sipped the sun-warmed wine to make us bold.
"I'd like to go to Mexico," you said,
"with you, someday, before we're too damn old,"
while in the sky an airplane's vapor trail
politely licked its seal across the sun.
We watched the growing, tantalizing tail,
until it matter-of-factly came undone.
Blue Willow
A pond will deepen toward the center like a plate
we traced its shallow rim my mother steering
my inner tube past the rushes where I looked
for Moses we said it was a trip around the world
in China we wove through curtains of willow
that tickled our necks let's do that again
and we'd double back idle there lifting
our heads to the green rain
swallows over us later I dreamed
of flying with them we had all the time
in the world we had the world
how could those trees be weeping?
-- Jody Gladding
Trees
Jennifer Tseng
One summer he planted a tree.
It was young,
small as a rose bush.
We were intent on watching it.
We were young,
we wanted the fruit to come.
Father brought the coffee can outside,
paced between the tree and the backyard spigot.
We liked to watch him fill the can,
feed water to the little tree.
We liked to see the brown soil
blacken beneath his fingers.
Young trees keep their fruit inside
for so long. You have to stay with them
for years before they'll bear it.
When the first pear came
we forgot about the water,
the soil and the man
with the coffee can.
We could already taste its sweetness
through the hard, green skin.
It hung there new, like so
many curves we recognized.
Don't touch
he said
don't touch.
We listened at first, we obeyed
because it was small then
easier to resist.
But later we saw
its size would fill up our hands.
At night when he went away
we held it.
Finally the yellow ink took over,
the flesh was soft,
we became gentle.
Father decided it was time
to pluck it,
he decided it was
time to eat.
Mother brought out the special plate,
the red one mottled with Chinese birds.
He placed the yellow pear on the red plate,
divided the fruit with a knife.
It lay there open like a flower,
a pale tropical thing with four
petals, keen with the smell of sugar.
Each one dripping juice, almost tears,
each one riven from the others,
so yellow against the red birds.
Choose one,
he said.
And we knew he would watch
to see which one we chose.
The old story echoed in the air,
he did not have to speak
to tell it. The story of the child
with the most honor
the one who saves the best
for her mother.
All of us fight
for the smallest piece.
Soon the fruit is gone,
eaten under his watchful eye.
Time to wait for the next one.
Mother rinses the plate,
shines the birds with her swift cloth.
Now he has cut the tree down.
He says it interferes with the plumbing.
Too many roots.
Mother is a bird flying.
Sister sends me fruit in the mail:
apricots, cranberries, apples, plums.
We are young, small,
hungry as girls, hiding
our fruit in the cupboards
*weeps for the aspens
Tit for Tat
I often pass a gracious tree
Whose name I can't identify,
But still I bow, in courtesy
It waves a bough, in kind reply.
I do not know your name, o tree
(Are you a hemlock of a pine?)
But why should that embarrass me?
Quite probably you don't know mine.
-- Christopher Morley
of = or a pine
Wind
Ted Hughes
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up --
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
wherein we may see
the leaves and seeds and lichen
proper to
each tree
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die, too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
-- Philip Larkin
Willow
Okay, willow, breathe on me
from the sunless opening in you —
crescent of gouges and breezes — slope
on which beetles stumble and are
flushed out —
Traffic, human traffic with its rinse
of promises and pauses is coming
for keeps.
And look there goes a swallow transplanting soil.
Me (let me think it)
I can sit on this bench longer than nature
and not know or crave a thing
about this bench, bottle cap dented into its plank
and initials scratched beside it, beside
the point: two raw letters forward to back just
as rare as any combination.
And now the date, plume of digits, daily
statistic.
This is behavior, willow, this
drone, it accompanied you once
in your grove of which
you have a memory — a lush one — don't you?
Was there no breath of you there?
I crossed the arc of your silhouette and lapped
your leaves' signature.
Things grew from you
beneath you in the patched grass
and not far away sat a man on
a bench.
You take it in or you don't.
You hide the sky or else.
Things lived in you.
You, stranger.
-- Mark Levine
*Bows to Bees, waves willow branches
Eucalyptus for tree-lovers.
oooooh!
Eucalyptus (though they have a tendency to kill the vegetation under them) are some lovely trees. The best thing about them is the scent of their leaves rubbed between the fingers. Burning one or two dead eucalyptus leaves will perfume my whole apartment.
Red gum trees are also lovely. Their bark is very smooth, making them very rewarding trees to hug.
(though they have a tendency to kill the vegetation under them)
They tend to lose big branches in the hot weather, too. Not the only thing they kill under them.
This is why you must hug them. Stay on their good side!
Pallas: I'm jealous. Wish I had some 'calyptus leaves to burn.
*waiting impatiently for first spring green to show on trees
where walnut trees
drop leaves
no other shrub
inweaves
and better yet
the nipping fleas
will know no ease
and won't beget
That was one of the best episodes of Nature I've seen in awhile.
Was good, fershure. I thought about posting the linky, but am suffering from lazypostitis.
Good on you, homy!
OLDLIST Old trees
old trees
ent-sure
the shade
the air
the ferns
that every
nurse log
wears
If you like that tree so much, why don't you just marry it?
Geologists discover world's largest fossil forest in the ceiling of an Illinois coal mine
That was the bestest story I've read all week! Thank you H-doggsei!
Picture, more news yow!
The whole damn environment ought to be in a witness protection program to save it from our rapacious fearless leader.
Good read! Thanks for posting, h-dogg.
...redwood forests are palpably spiritual places, even for atheists like me.
A previous resident planted a redwood sapling six feet off the back left corner of my cabin. I imagine it seemed like a good idea at the time...
If I could have a redwood, I would sacrifice the corner of the cabin!
Do we really need their GM trees?
The 'real' trees keep marching on.
Trees for ethanol? Who's handing out the money for this stupid idea?
What's Killing the Aspen? The signature tree of the Rockies is in trouble
What's killing the aspen?
Us.
Amazing! Go, scientists!!
Bo, Baobab, Pandanus, Cannonball, Traveler, Candle, and Grass trees
(Just re-read this thread for old time's sake. Oh, my, we posted lots and lots of good poems -n- stuff!)
Meeting a Visitor
Watching the mountain all day, I stand on clouds.
Suddenly I hear outside my bamboo grove an urgent knock.
Arranging my clothes and hat to meet my guest,
I see my shoes pasted with yellow leaves.
--Yuan Mei
walnuts fall
green hulls
turn black
this year
our squirrels
have been slack
nuts underfoot
with every stride
I hear a crack
Suzhou Park
Magnolia trees float out their flowers,
Vast, soft, upon a rubbish heap.
The grandfather sits still for hours:
His lap-held grandson is asleep,
Above him plane trees fan the sky.
Nearby, a man in muted dance
Does tai-qi-quan. A butterfly
Flies lightly past his easy trance.
A magpie flaps back to its pine.
A sparrow dust-rolls, fluffs, and cheeps.
The humans rest in a design:
One writes, one thinks, one moves, one sleeps.
The leaves trace out the stenciled stone,
And each is in his dream alone.
--Vikram Seth
Learning the Trees
Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn
The language of the trees. That’s done indoors,
Out of a book, which now you think of it
Is one of the transformations of a tree.
The words themselves are a delight to learn,
You might be in a foreign land of terms
Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,
Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.
But best of all are the words that shape the leaves—
Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform—
And their venation—palmate and parallel—
And tips—acute, truncate, auriculate.
Sufficiently provided, you may now
Go forth to the forests and the shady streets
To see how the chaos of experience
Answers to catalogue and category.
Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree
May differ among themselves more than they do
From other species, so you have to find,
All blandly says the book, “an average leaf.”
Example, the catalpa in the book
Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three
Around the stem; the one in front of you
But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;
Maybe it’s not catalpa? Dreadful doubt.
It may be weeks before you see an elm
Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,
A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.
Still, pedetemtim as Lucretius says,
Little by little, you do start to learn;
And learn as well, maybe, what language does
And how it does it, cutting across the world
Not always at the joints, competing with
Experience while cooperating with
Experience, and keeping an obstinate
Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.
Think finally about the secret will
Pretending obedience to Nature, but
Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,
Dividing up the world to conquer it,
And think also how funny knowledge is:
You may succeed in learning many trees
And calling off their names as you go by,
But their comprehensive silence stays the same.
Howard Nemerov
Lovely, Bees.
Pine Tree Tops
Gary Snyder
in the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into the sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.
overhead
a great tree
hangs in the sky
and stars perch
Gleefully stolen from MoFi:
Tree Porn
excellent pictures
Wow, a great forest of 'em! Magnificent.
Wonderful!
This is the way that autumn came to the trees:
it stripped them down to the skin,
left their ebony bodies naked.
It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,
scattered them over the ground.
Anyone could trample them out of shape
undisturbed by a single moan of protest.
The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn out of its throat.
They dropped into the dust
even before the hunter strung his bow.
Oh, God of May have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection;
make their dead veins flow with blood again.
Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing
--Faiz Ahmed Faiz, "When Autumn Came" trans Naomi Lazard
On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(To hear us talk)
Robert Frost
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey's end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are
Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.
And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole
And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.
The Maple
is a system of posture for wood.
A way of not falling down
for twigs that happens
to benefit birds. I don't know.
I'm staring at a tree,
at yellow leaves
threshed by wind and want you
reading this to be staring
at the same tree. I could
cut it down and laminate it
or ask you to live with me
on the stairs with the window
keeping an eye on the maple
but I think your real life
would miss you. The story
here is that all morning
I've thought of the statement
that art is about loneliness
while watching golden leaves
become unhinged.
By ones or in bunches
they tumble and hang
for a moment like a dress
in the dryer.
At the laundromat
you've seen the arms
thrown out to catch the shirt
flying the other way.
Just as you've stood
at the bottom of a gray sky
in a pile of leaves
trying to lick them
back into place.
--Bob Hicok
system of posture for wood
I LIKE that!
Poems
I think that I shall never read
A tree of any shape or breed -
For all its xylem and its phloem -
As fascinating as a poem.
Trees must make themselves and so
They tend to seem a little slow
To those accustomed to the pace
Of poems that speed through time and space
As fast as thought. We shouldn't blame
The trees, of course: we'd be the same
If we had roots instead of brains.
While trees just grow, a poem explains,
By precept and example, how
Leaves develop on the bough
And new ideas in the mind.
A sensibility refined
By reading many poems will be
More able to admire a tree
Than lumberjacks and nesting birds
Who lack a poet's way with words
And tend to look at any tree
In terms of its utility.
And so before we give our praise
To pines and oaks and laurels and bays,
We ought to celebrate the poems
That made our human hearts their homes.
--Thomas Disch
Thankful, my country, be to him who first
Brought hither from Australia oversea
Sapling or seed of the undeciduous tree
Whose grave and sombre foliage fears no burst
Of heat from summer-naked heavens, nor thirst
Though all the winter is rainless, and the bee
Starves, finding not a blossom. Patiently
The great roots delve, and feel though deep-immersed
Some layer of ancient moisture, and the leaves
Perish not, hanging pointed in the sky.
To see these lofty trunks gray-barked and broad
Wall with clear shade a long white southern road
I have been as one devoted, who receives
An impulse or a promise from on high.
--Robinson Jeffers, "Eucalyptus Trees"
The Sacred Tree, translated by Malachi McCormick, is a hand-made book for a world gone mad in the pursuit of the unnatural.
We experience our perceptions. That is our nature, so to speak.
Not sure I understand what the pursuit of the unnatural means here.
*pricks ears*
Blackbird poems?
*?*
We experience our perceptions. That is our nature, so to speak.
Not sure I understand what the pursuit of the unnatural means here.
In that hand-made book of poems I referenced (still $30 although I bought my copy at the Independent and Small Press Book Fair in 1992) - that book celebrates living a simple life in natural surroundings, based on the life of Marban, who McCormick describes in his forward as "a hermit in seventh century Ireland..who lived in the forest, somewhere south of Galway bay... His brother, Gualire is king of Connacht... who questions Marban's calling. 'Why don't you sleep in a proper bed?' Marban (is) so persuasive that Guaire wants to give up his kingdom to join him...At that time, Ireland was still largely covered with forests of oak, elm, ash, pin, yew, hazel and holly...We probably should not say that Marban lived in 'the forest' as much as that Guaire lived 'in a clearing.' City life (life in the clearing) is more unnatural, I had thought. Here are some stanzas from the poem as translated, however you might choose to better characterize the hermit's life-style on the scale of artificiality:
MARBAN:
I HAVE A HUT IN THE WOODS; ONLY GOD
KNOWS WHERE IT IS. AN ASH TREE
ON ONE SIDE AND A HAZEL - LIKE A
SACRED RATH TREE - ON THE OTHER.
TWO HEATHER BUSHES AS DOOR POSTS,
A HONEYSUCKLE FOR A LINTEL.
OAK TREES ARE CLOSE BY; THEY DROP
ACORNS FOR THE FATTENING PIGS.
MY HUT IS SMALL BUT NOT THAT SMALL;
FAMILIAR PATHS LEAD TO IT.
A WOMAN IN A BLACKBIRD CLOAK
SINGS HER LOVELY TUNE FROM THE ROOF...
(The text was writtin in uncel without capitalization, but I transcribed it rather without NONcapitalization to give the flavor.)
Blackbird poems?
How did Bluehorse know that there was such a reference in a book as rare as this? I am constantly amazed by her erudition!
Thank ye, Dan.
*blushes*
Actually Dan, I'm not really erudite (I just like to keep the masses fooled) when Bees posted, I just RTFP and saw mention of blackbirds.
A cycle of blackbird poems, all powerfully imbued with a sense of sacred nature
I lubs me some blackbirds. And pomes.
BlueHorse, you're back: delightful!
blackbirds welcome
by the fieldfull
by the treeful
or the flock
ravens roosting
in the pine grove
on the watch
for owl and hawk
Tree Marriage
In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This gossamer we
hold each other with, this web
of love and habit is not enough.
In mistrust of heavier ties,
I would like tree-siblings for us,
standing together somewhere, two
trees married with us, lightly, their
fingers barely touching in sleep,
our threads invisible but holding
--William Meredith
The Plum Trees
Mary Oliver
Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into
the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment
rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don't
succumb, there's nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy
is a taste before
it's anything else, and the body
can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,
the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it
into the body first, like small
wild plums.
Tit for Tat
I often pass a gracious tree
Whose name I can't identify,
But still I bow, in courtesy
It waves a bough, in kind reply.
I do not know your name, O tree
(Are you a hemlock or a pine?)
But why should that embarrass me?
Quite probably you don't know mine.
-- Christopher Morley
Planting a Dogwood
Tree, we take leave of you; you’re on your own.
Put down your taproot with its probing hairs
that sluice the darkness and create unseen
the tree that mirrors you below the ground.
For when we plant a tree, two trees take root:
the one that lifts its leaves into the air,
and the inverted one that cleaves the soil
to find the runnel’s sweet, dull silver trace
and spreads not up but down, each drop a leaf
in the eternal blackness of that sky.
The leaves you show uncurl like tiny fists
and bear small button blossoms, greenish white,
that quicken you. Now put your roots down deep;
draw light from shadow, break in on earth’s sleep.
--Roy Scheele
The Apple Tree
Wendell Berry
for Ann and Dick O’Hanlon
In the essential prose
of things, the apple tree
stands up, emphatic
among the accidents
of the afternoon, solvent,
not to be denied.
The grass has been cut
down, carefully
to leave the orange
poppies still in bloom;
the tree stands up
in the odor of the grass
drying. The forked
trunk and branches are
also a kind of necessary
prose—shingled with leaves,
pigment and song
imposed on the blunt
lineaments of fact, a foliage
of small birds among them.
The tree lifts itself up
in the garden, the
clutter of its green
leaves halving the light,
stating the unalterable
congruity and form
of its casual growth;
the crimson finches appear
and disappear, singing
among the design.
The doughty oaks
Oaks don’t drop their leaves
as elms and lindens do.
They evolved no corky layer,
no special tricks.
They shut off the water.
Leaves hang on withering
tougher than leather.
Wind tears them loose.
Slowly they grow, white oaks
under the pitch pines,
tap roots plunging
deep, enormous carrots.
By the marsh they turn
twisting, writhing
aging into lichens, contorted
like the wind solidified.
In the spring how stubborn
how cautious
clutching their wallets tight.
Long after the maples,
the beeches have leafed out
they sleep in their ragged leaves.
Reluctantly in the buzz and hum
they raise velvet
antlers flushed red,
then flash silvery tassels.
At last vaulted
green chambers of summer.
Ponderous, when mature, as elephants,
in the storm they slam castle doors.
They all prepare to be great
grandfathers, in the meantime
dealing in cup and saucer acorns.
When frost crispens the morning,
they give up nothing willingly.
Always fighting the season,
conservative, mulish.
I find it easy to admire in trees
what depresses me in people.
--Marge Piercy
Big trees dying - not unexpected so much as not good :(
*sigh*
Will have to make sure my grandkids get to see the redwoods soon.
Their world will be so different.
The cost of global warming may be death for these asexually cloned seagrass Methuselahs. For us, the price of sexuality is death. Enjoy them both while you can?
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