When I Am Among the Trees, by Mary Oliver

Dedicated to my tree and nature loving family.

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
    but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine." 

--Mary Oliver 

Begin by Rumi

Begin

This is now.  Now is.  Don't postpone

till then.   Spend the spark of iron

 on stone.  Sit at the head of the table.

Dip your spoon in the bowl.  Seat yourself

 next to your joy and have your awakened soul

pour wine.                                                

                              Branches in the spring wind,

 easy dance of jasmine and cypress.  Cloth

for green robes has been cut from pure

 absence.         You're the tailor, settled

among your shop goods, quietly sewing.

Inquiry:  What is unfinished for me to give?   What is unfinished for me to heal?  What is unfinished for me to learn?  What is unfinished for me to experience?

Clarissa Pinkola Estes A Prayer

A Prayer

Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you
from lifting your heart
toward heaven---
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.

 

©Copyright 1980, 2007, Dr. C.P. Estes, All Rights Reserved.

From La Pasionaria, Collected Works, Poetry of Clarissa Pinkola Estes,

forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf.

Wendell Berry Vision

Somewhat reminiscent of John Lennon's  Imagine

Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

here, their houses strongly placed

upon the valley sides...

The river will run

clear, as we will never know it...

On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down

the old forest, an old forest will stand,

its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields...

Memory,

native to this valley, will spread over it

like a grove, and memory will grow

into legend, legend into song, song

into sacrament. The abundance of this place,

the songs of its people and its birds,

will be health and wisdom and indwelling

light. This is no paradisal dream.

Its hardship is its reality.

The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry poem I Go Among Trees

Wendell Berry

 

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.


Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.


Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.


After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.