I like trees because they seem
more resigned to the way they have
to live than other things do.
-Willa Cather
Maybe I should drop my to-do list and take a walk and look for trees. Look, you ask? Yes. How many walks lately have I taken,and not seen a single tree,saw only the things going on inside of me. This morning, I need to see trees. An oak would be nice. There aren't too many old fellows around my suburban home. I live on what used to be a farm. I actually saw them rip up the farmland...much regret and sadness for having done so. But, I could not stop it. When they tore down the old white farm house..oh! I sighed horribly. A bank building stands where it once did..but I remember her clapboard form,unable to move or flee from her destroyers.
No,today,I need a Bur Oak, prairie survivor,withstander of fires,deep rooted one.
Homage
Come,we'll talk to the trees
the venerable holy fathers
their evening branches hung with crows
like funeral flowers.
Walk softly among my friends
and listen,learn forbearance.
Deep in their cowls their voices
murmur Te Deum, praise the Great Spirit,
the Sun God. Offer thanks to Allah,
to Buddha,to the Great Goddess.
Nodding and bowing,they reach
wide arms in friendship. They do not
bloody the soil to prove
whose prayer is best. Listen.
They will grant you absolution. Repent.
by ALICE D'ALESSIO/ Wisconsin poet
I want to paint today,but that will not happen, and I am stifled. Stifled by duties. Duties that cannot be ignored..rotted window,broken garage door opener,furnace cleaning..bah!
I haven't dipped a brush in paint in a long time....and today I want to. This urge is fleeting. I'm not that good, in fact, I'm down right an amateur, but I want to mix colors and dab my brush on paper...play. So....
what am I to do. I can't just dip a little...oh no! I throw myself into anything I do..I love that "zone"
Take a walk girl this morning...get absolution for not following your desire.
That quote by Willa Cather is so touching...I have meditated on that very thought so many times: when I look out the window at a cold winter's day and see the trees coverd in ice, boughing from its weight...they can't come inside and warm up; escape the elements....they just have to be.
ReplyDeleteOr a tree being eaten by nasty insects...it can't brush those little leaf chewers off and kick up their roots and run out of there....they just have to be.
Isn't it silly that I actually feel sorry for trees that seem to suffer? They just tore a huge path through a hedgerow of trees in a field across from where I live. How many animals lost their homes? It upset me....do we really need yet another road? And does the world really need another bank? I know you how you feel. It's sad.
I love the acorn caps to the Bur Oak! I collect them like a child!
Yes, domestic duties stifle me too....I hate having to stop my writing to cook dinner! How dare my husband desire to eat! :)
Go for that walk and paint your heart out today!
~Annie~
ps.....this was a lovely post on trees...really enjoyed it.
Oh Suz, we must all have been thinking about the trees yesterday. I was at The Center, of course admiring all the familiar trees there that have become friends,and picking up leaves on the ground with galls on them. There were so many! The first one I noticed had a "fuzzy" gall on it and I thought it was a little caterpillar. I couldn't just let them lay on the ground for someone to step on, so I placed them all on a picnic table by the log cabin. I know they would eventually blow away, but maybe they would blow the other direction where they would be safe. Do love the poem too.
ReplyDeleteI do love trees too! Loved the 8th grade assignment of collecting them and putting them in a book. learned the names of many. I have a huge collection of writings about trees too. My Dad being interessted too with his plywood Company. Then the times when paper was getting scarce with the taking down of many trees all over the world, it's so distressing.
ReplyDeleteLove the Burr Oak acorns too!! And the leaves shaped like a witch (one of the things I learned years ago!!)
Marjorie,a collection of writings on trees? How wonderful...share sometime? Burr oaks...loveable...all agree...say "aye!"
ReplyDelete