You & I are suddenly what
The Trees try to Tell us we are²
What Beautiful Trees! Life ought
To be Beautiful Underneath them³
I’ll never see a Poem as Lovely as a Tree⁴
I’m going into the Forest – into the Oneness⁵
How wide is the Forest? As wide as the Mind⁶
Leaves are not more shed from the Trees or trees
From the Earth than they are Shed out of You⁷
Of all the Sounds despatched abroad, there
Is not a charge to me like that old measure
In the Boughs – that Phraseless Melody⁸
If I Cut a Tree – my Arm would Bleed⁹
The Tree says to me: “I am here – I
Am here – I am Life, Eternal Life”¹⁰
¹ Robert Bly, A Home in Dark Grass
² Denise Levertov, Some Trees
³ Anton Chekhov tr. Constance Garnett, Three Sisters
⁴ Joyce Kilmer, Trees
⁵ Hermann Hesse tr. Joachim Neugroschel, Siddhartha
⁶ Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea
⁷ Walt Whitman, A Song for Occupations
⁸ Emily Dickinson, Of All the Sounds Despatched Abroad
⁹ Alice Walker, The Color Purple
¹⁰ Quoted in Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning