Thank you Inda. I've spent many hours conversing with the trees, listening to the wisdom they share, and feeling the peace they bring. After an intense week, finding this thread was perfect.

I had to use the name flower to resign into this forum.

Love, Joie

Dear Joie,

It is absolutely wonderful to see you here. I have missed your beautiful posts from the Chopra boards.

Sit under the branches of a blossoming tree and open your eyes to infinite beauty. Trees not only provide us with beauty, but with the necessary elements to stay alive.



Let us nourish the trees and give them a hug

Love, Inda

I received this beautiful painting in my e-mail, but I don't know who the artist is. I hope that he or she does not mind my posting it here, it's beauty really fits in with all the other trees.

Thank you Inda.

The cedar extends her branch, reaches out to me, and reminds me to breathe.

Thank you Joie, or flower which is also a very pretty name, for bringing back the tree post. I love this thread, because I also love all the trees.

Love,
yoko


tsuki o matsu ni
kaketari hazushi
temo mitari


The moon on the pine:
hanging it, taking it off--
I keeep on gazing. -Hokushi (c. 1665-1718)

Art and poetry from the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

Thank you Joie and yoko for continuing the tree post.

Think Like a Tree

by Karen I. Shragg

Soak up the sun
Affirm life's magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Feel refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first signs of spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky
Be still long enough to
hear your own leaves rustling.

http://www.spiritoftrees.org/p...ink_tree_shragg.html

Thank you for continuing this post girls.
I have always loved this thread.

May we take care of the trees, and all of life that depends on that.



Let us look forward to the pleasant landscape of the future.

Chief John Ross,
Cherokee

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

-Osho

Winter garden,

the moon thinned to a thread,

insects singing.


Matsuo Basho



Translated by Robert Hass
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The tree is a thing of beauty in every season.
Winter will allow us to enjoy its branches and its basic shape.

Enjoy it before the blossoms and leaves will appear.

The oak tree:

not interested

in cherry blossoms.


Matsuo Basho



Translated by Robert Hass
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But soon the cherry blossoms will appear

Thank you yoko.
your replies are lovely.

Trees
Trees are joy inspiring
In those first sweet days of May
Stretching forth their lacy tendrils
To entice the lark to stay.
Trees are gracious, charming
When glossed with summer sheen
They catch the vagrant breezes
And spread their shady green. .
And somehow in the Autumn
When the magic touch of time
Has clad these trees in russet-gold
We sense a hand divine.
Yet Trees in winter fascinate
When their gaunt, nude forms arise
And trace in grotesque patterns,
Silhouettes against the skies.

-C. H. BOLTON


Winter is coming to an end and soon we will see this

BIRCHES

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.



Robert Frost

Image from

http://smart-studio.com/birches.jpg

It is wonderful to walk in the shade of the trees at the moment.

Trees

By Joyce Kilmer


I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing
Breast.

A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray.
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair.

Upon whose bosom snow has lain.
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.