Tree Wisdom (vol. 3, no. 7)

Here are a few things I’m sharing this month:

1. Question I’m living with:

“Three in Transition” by David Ignatow:

I wish I understood the beauty
in leaves falling. To whom
are we beautiful
as we go?

2. Quote I’m considering:

  • “When a tree is cut down and shows its fatal wound naked to the sunlight, we can read its whole history in the bright disk of its trunk and gravestone: in its annual rings and deformities are faithfully recorded all the struggle, all the suffering and illness, all of the joy and flourishing, the lean years and the rich years, attacks withstood and storms outlasted. And every farm boy knows that the hardest, noblest wood has the narrowest rings, and that the most indestructible, strongest, most exemplary trunks grow high in the mountains, in constant danger.” – Herman Hesse (Trees)

3. Poem I’m pondering:

“Ancestors” by Ada Limón

I’ve come here from the rocks, the bonelike chert,
            obsidian, lava rock. I’ve come here from the trees—

chestnut, bay laurel, toyon, acacia, redwood, cedar,

one thousand oaks
            that bend with moss and old man’s beard.
I was born on a green couch on Carriger Road

between the vineyards and the horse pasture.

I don’t remember what I first saw, the brick of light
            that unhinged me from the beginning. I don’t remember

my brother’s face, my mother, my father.            

Later, I remember leaves, through car windows,
through bedroom windows, through the classroom window,

the way they shaded and patterned the ground, all that
            power from roots. Imagine you must survive

without running? I’ve come from the lacing patterns of leaves,            

I do not know where else I belong.

4. Something inspiring

5. The blog’s still on hold as I write my Rewild School book. But I took a break from writing and made a playlist of the Top Ten Working Man Songs.

If you’re reading this newsletter for the first time, you can read previous issues hereview lists of poems, questions, quotes and songs I’ve shared before here, and subscribe here.

Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn

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