Trees Against The Sky

On National Poetry Day, a poem about trees and nature

Trees Against The Sky

Edge of Wood in Cumbria

Pines against the sky,

Pluming the purple hill;

Pines . . . and I wonder why,

Heart, you quicken and thrill?

Wistful heart of a boy,

Fill with a strange sweet joy,

Lifting to Heaven nigh -

Pines against the sky.

Palms against the sky,

Failing the hot, hard blue;

Stark on the beach I lie,

Dreaming horizons new;

Heart of my youth elate,

Scorning a humdrum fate,

Keyed to adventure high -

Palms against the sky.

Oaks against the sky,

Ramparts of leaves high-hurled,

Staunch to stand and defy

All the winds of the world;

Stalwart and proud and free,

Firing the man in me

To try and again to try -

Oaks against the sky.

Olives against the sky

Of evening, limpidly bright;

Tranquil and soft and shy,

Dreaming in amber light;

Breathing the peace of life,

Ease after toil and strife . . .

Hark to their silver sigh!

Olives against the sky.

Cypresses glooming the sky,

Stark at the end of the road;

Failing and faint am I,

Lief to be eased of my load;

There where the stones peer white

in the last of the silvery light,

Quiet and cold I'll lie -

Cypresses etching the sky.

Trees, trees against the sky -

O I have loved them well!

There are pleasures you cannot buy,

Treasurers you cannot sell,

And not the smallest of these

Is the gift and glory of trees. . . .

So I gaze and I know now why

It is good to live - and to die. . . .

Trees and the Infinite Sky.

 Robert William Service (1874-1958)

A Squirrel Buries Its Treasure

A squirrel gets ready for the winter ahead. Henry David Thoreau watched as the little creature carried out its work and later wrote about the scene...

It’s that time of year – autumn, the season of collecting, harvesting and preparing for winter.   The markers of the passing of the seasons are very noticeable in rural areas as humans and non-humans set about preparing for the long, dark months ahead.  The fields and barns have been a hive of activity and indoors, people begin to stock up with winter supplies.  But others too are acutely aware that the seasonal clock is ticking and in the woods, there is much to-ing and fro-ing among the small mammals.  It has been several months since I saw a red squirrel but I have spotted a couple lately while walking in the local forest.  When an opportunity arises and it is possible to observe one from a discreet vantage point, I return somewhat richer and happier for the encounter.

It was after returning from the woods and watching a squirrel going about its business that Henry David Thoreau put pen to paper and recorded the event:

 “I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth.  He stopped near the foot of a hemlock, and hastily pawing a hole with its fore feet, dropped the nut, covered it up, and retreated part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments.  I approached the shore to examine the deposit, and he, descending betrayed no little anxiety for his treasure and made two or three motions to recover the nut before he retreated.  Digging there, I found two pignuts joined together, with their green shells on, buried about an inch and a half in the soil, under the red hemlock leaves.  This then, is the way forests are planted.  This nut must have been brought twenty rods at least and was buried at just the right depth.  If the squirrel is killed, or neglects its deposit, a hickory springs up.”  

( H D Thoreau 

from 

The Journal of Henry David Thoreau)

New Year Thoughts

"A new year begins, as we say. And the latent bud on the branch doesn't stir one whit, the blossom in the bulb sleeps undisturbed in the frozen ground. The woodchuck's hibernating pulse doesn't quicken one beat, and the deer in the thicket is just as hungry as he was yesterday. Man is the only animal to whom this new year is important. All the others live by day and the season.

 The old year dies and we face the new year as though it were an entity, new as a newborn babe. A new calendar with twelve leaves, one for each month. Something in us, some need for the specific, the orderly, the mathematical exactitude, calls for such demarcation. Yet any year, regardless of arbitrary time, is like a circle; you can start at any point upon it and, following the circle, you come back to that point. Our year, our circle, happens to be a cycle of the seasons, planting, growing, reaping, resting; and thus it is a part of the earth, the soil and the flowing waters as well as of the stars by which it is gauged.... And year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us."

 (Hal Borland)