As we are confined close to our homes, the trees continue to both watch over and accompany us. Another companion for me is Mary Oliver and her poems. So how about a bit of Mary and trees?
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.
. . . .
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.”
From Thirst 2006
by the Kyle of Sutherland
Black Oaks
Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,
or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.
. . . .
But to tell the truth after a while I’m pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen
and you can’t keep me from the woods, from the tonnage
of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.
. . . .
For here I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.
. . . .
From West Wind 1997
Along the River Moriston
In The Tempset, when Prospero is shipwrecked on the island, he hears the screams and howls of Ariel. The witch Sycorax ordered Ariel to help with her “abhorr’d commands.” But Ariel refused because “he wast a spirit too delicate.” So as Prospero monthly reminds Ariel that Sycorax “did confine thee . . . in her most unmitigable rage, into a cloven pine; within which rift imprison’d thou didst painfully remain a dozen years.” “When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape the pine, and let thee out.” But Prospero freed Ariel, only to make him his own slave, and in turn threatened him: “If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak, and peg thee in his knotty entrails, till thou hast howl’d away twelve winters.” The Tempset, Act I, scene II.
And there, in the trees along the River Moriston, was Ariel.
Ariel