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Posts Tagged ‘trees’

What’s Really at Stake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 22, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
I like to live in the scent of pine
on a thaw-some winter morning,
viscous tendrils of tree perfume
thick in the air, scent of evergreen,
yes, but a warmer scent, too,
like honey, like vanilla, like must.
I like the way the scent lives in me
as I move through the tussocks  
of snow. I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here
in the moment. As if I, too, might remember
how surely I depend on this earth,
how surely it depends on me.

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One Night Before Christmas

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 24, 2024| 1 Comment »


 
 
ornaments for the galaxy
between bare cottonwood branches
hung by what great hand, the stars

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In a World Such as This

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 20, 2024| 11 Comments »


 
 
She matches her photograph,
so most people don’t notice
she’s become a cottonwood tree.
 
Every morning before she leaves for school,
she tucks her roots into her shoes
and gathers her branches beneath her skin.
 
I have sat beneath her shade
and gathered her cotton in my hands,
marveled at how quickly she grows,
 
admired how she stabilizes the world,
makes shelter for others
from the gale.
 
How many other people
that we see on the street
are actually trees?
 
A conifer with an evergreen grin.
A maple with hidden sweetness.
A child who is a sequoia.
 
In a world such as this,
hungry and shifting,
it is necessary to listen to the trees.
 
Because it’s hard to tell who they are,
we must listen
to everyone.
 

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Subtraction

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2024| 7 Comments »


 
For months now, the days darken.
This signals the trees to stop making chlorophyll,
and, in its absence, other pigments in the leaves
can be seen. Yellow flavonols. Orange carotenoids.
Red anthocyanins. They adorn each tree
with such radiance, such honest treasure—
a beauty that was always there
concealed beneath the green.
 
Touch me, I want to say to the darkness.
or perhaps more truly, I say to the self,
be touched, be touched as if you are a tree.
Let what you know of yourself break down.
What hidden gold might be revealed then?
What amber? What astonishing vermillion?

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At the Picnic with the Parks Supervisor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 4, 2024| 4 Comments »

With thanks to Rich Hamilton

I remember when I planted that tree,
he says, and I look at the beautiful
sensation box elder that grows
in the park, tall as the fire station,
alive as I am. I bet you remember
when this park was a dustbowl with dandelions,
he jokes. And I do, though in this
moment my feet sink into bright green grass.
I remember chasing my children
around that tree when we were younger.
I remember when that pool of shade
where people now sit was all brash sun.
I think of how much time it takes
to nurture a place. I tell myself,
sometimes goodness grows 
in the world if we wait. I tell myself,
sweetheart, time to plant trees.

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Instead of Turning Off the News

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 29, 2024| 14 Comments »

Because it hurts to think about
the lost look in the boy’s eyes
as he holds out a thin silver pot for food,
because I ache when I think about the rubble
made of kitchen tables and bicycles,
hospitals, homes, high schools, hope,
because it is so painful to not know how
to help hundreds of thousands
of mothers and uncles and brothers
and daughters, I think about trees.
I think about how they grow.
How they need wind and the stress
of the world to build reaction wood
that helps them to lengthen
and strengthen into the bend.
Without such wood, the tree would break,
would fall. Oh self who would try to lock out the news,
oh self who feels the great weight of other’s pain,
of course you would want to look instead
for only what is beautiful, what is kind.
But let it all in. The fear. The worry. The anger.
The wishing. The compassion.
The longing to help. Of course
the big problems make you feel small.
But unless you can stand
in the place of yes to the world,
you can’t really stand at all.
The hunters in Eurasia would harvest
the compression wood created by stress
to make their bow staves—
that wood was stronger, more dense.
Oh self, you too need the right tools
to do the heart work you long to do.
What are you made of?
How strong are your roots?
Who will you be if you do not let it all in?

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Woodsy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 18, 2024| 8 Comments »

somewhere above Telluride, Colorado


If you close your eyes and just breathe in,
then it’s sixteen years ago and we’re off the trail
roaming through damp autumn woods.
The duff is soft with needles, moss,
and the air is scented with resinous spruce—
fresh and woodsy, tangy, bright.
Sun filters into the evergreen glade
to kiss the clearing with light. Remember, love?
Whatever dreams we brought in with us,
they, too, came to smell of earth, forest,
musk and shade. The mountains
had their way with us that day.
We said little, but by the time we left,
shadow-drunk and gloriously map-less,
everything had changed.  

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Shifting Purpose

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 24, 2023| 7 Comments »




Yesterday, the thing to do
   was to rake the golden leaves
    from the grass and gather them
       into huge untidy piles
  for my husband to pull away.
   Today the invitation is
to not rake the leaves.
   To sit in the grass and feel myself
    folded into an unmanaged beauty.
  The invitation is to admire
     their infinite shades of yellow
   and brown—to notice
how some are speckled,
  some torn, some brittle,
      some still impossibly soft.
   If some part of me
     feels duty bound
  to straighten the world,
she is not here now.
   I want nothing but to sprawl
 in disorder, to feel only delight
      as the wind releases leaves
   from the autumn trees,
want to relish how, with no politic,
the leaves dance to the ground.
  Want to know myself as unruly,
  one who finds joy in the rustling,
one who thrills in the glorious mess.

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Staying in the Canyon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 8, 2023| 10 Comments »




I imagine the trees saying
it is not such a bad thing
to show up day after day
in the same place with the same
walls and the same light
and the same soil.
All that moving around
is one way to live.
Staying rooted is another.
I notice I want to argue.
I notice I want to relent.
I notice they have no sense
of lack. Their days are full.
Their heartwood strong.
I imagine them saying,
so much can travel inside you
when you never move at all.

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Note to the Inner Green Leaves

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 26, 2022| 2 Comments »




Every day, more gold.
Every day, a sacred spilling
across the mountains, the valleys.

I have felt, before, like an aspen still green
when the surrounding trees
have transformed into radiance.

Oh, this learning to trust our own timing.
In the meantime, every day more gold.
Every day, a sacred spilling.

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