Sunday, March 21, 2010
Be Like Trees
Be Like Trees
Sprout stubborn roots insistent on their purchase. Be
grateful, be hungry (fight!) for light and heat and rain. Expand
beyond the earth you have been ceded.
Experience each season in its turn. Grow
strong, then open: to flower, to shelter, to shade. Reach
for what may only be discovered in the reaching.
Where there is no path, invent one--be like trees.
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Another gorgeous poem in sound and images with surprises of words like "purchase" sending back to the way roots and puppies and children and ideas and friends and weather all come reaching into one's life, rooting and routing along, opening up the way into inventions out of the earth and apparent ordinary, blossoming in rain and flowers and more. The thunders out of the grey sky this day sent Finn into my lap, an Argos in the long ventures through days, a snuggle, a shy lick of a kiss, making the way together.
ReplyDeleteThe bit of earth "ceded" in this Lenten season is, of course, a mere puff of dust, a speck whisked away in the Great Dustbowl made from the winds out of Eden, the twirling of the angel's sword, the dizzy blowing away and away.
The reach beyond the "ceded" is the promise beyond the judgment and the angel's sword. The reaching is part of the judgment and the gifting and the promise altogether.
And what is it, then? The insistent roots, demanding their "purchase", the "invent" of a new way when none is simply given, the good ol' American pioneer spirit of reaching and grabbing beyond the merely "ceded".
The translation here in words and images of the natural world, the personal world, and the world of history and theology as well, the clamor of the strain of it, going back to the roots of even oneself and seeking company for the way. And if no company, invent a path like the plowing roots, entangling the ceded earth into something broken and blistered awake by the heat of the roots, gobbling earth in transformations -- like a life in the dark into words and poems. Like this.
The sounds reaching beyond mere "ceded" to a poem or a poet, even the hilarious parentheses out of "hungry", "(fight!)". I know that's not really hilarious in meaning, but it smiles its way into the poem nonetheless, with a bit of goofy exclaim like some e.e. cummings poem, a goat-footed old balloon man whistling.
Risings, like trees in the grey dank winds this evening, inventions of spring in the dark. It is oneself, or is it the season in transformations? I don't think the poem or the trees tell. I love the trilogy in the second stanza of the way of waking and flowering, that the flowering turns to shelter and then to shade, a blossoming into the comfort of the dark, and back to the reaching roots.
There's way more than one reason why we should be like trees. So when you say it as the title, they all come rushing: trees are food for a million forms of life. Trees filter our water. Trees give us breath. Trees hold the damn soil together, so we can walk on it. And trees give us food. So, yeah, be like trees. Now we're ready to enter the poem with this hugeness in us.
ReplyDeleteBut, Oh Ruler of the Metaphor, not just. Another one of my favorite concepts: the tree growing in the sidewalk crack. It has no room, and pushes up anyway, at all costs, to live. I love stubborn roots because you can't let anybody break you...but then right away be grateful, because that's the only place where true growth comes from. Stubborn and grateful. Yeah.
Be hungry (thank you for the rhyme) and fight for light because that's what growing trees have to do with all the other trees around, but also, there's so much darkness we have to conquer (not the right word - NOT choose, is better) to get to our light.
Here's my favorite: expand/beyond the earth you have been ceded. ! Blah blah soil, blah blah roots stretch - Um, now so good, I almost can't talk about it: keep growing out of our defined spaces into bigger spaces, infinitely. We know this but also, You, poet, step out of the poem for a second and say to me intimately, this planet ain't all there is yo. The mind! Universal oneness! STOP IT!
I'm psyched about this, a lot: (grow/strong line break so tasty) and light/flower, heat/shelter, rain/shade. Now you would THINK heat/shade rain/shelter. But no: you're smarter than that. Light/flower is a must, right...but switching the natural assumption of the others is like--in the second tercet, where the speaker is asking us to open, to me it says, you've got to take the things that come however they come. The map does not belong to you - only the path. Shelter yourself from difficult things when you need to. Rest when you need to.
I fall completely in love at Reach/reaching. What a damn sentence that is. An SP special.
And then, that pow - it's so good. It's. so. good. You finally tell us the exact thing you mean about that title--and the poem deepens exponentially. ALL I see are roots. A brilliant skein of juicy, deep roots. And this ending be like trees is the point at which I feel like i got too excited then slapped, then sat down, and told to read it again, more slowly this time. Because there's so. much. more. here.
Please don't ever stop.
ps: light/heat/rain and flower/shelter/shade is also a beautiful rhyme, and the rhythm feels so perfect this way, which just adds. It adds. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteMore please.
ReplyDelete