AustinGranny.com - Sainted Oaks

I thank you God for
this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything
which is natural,
which is infinite,
which is yes.
— e.e. cummings

THIS IS THE GARDEN

this is the garden: colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.
This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured, as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

by e.e. cummings, from Complete Poems

Sometimes I come across a tree
which seems like Buddha or Jesus:

loving,
compassionate,
still,
unambitious,
enlightened,
in eternal meditation,

giving pleasure to a pilgrim,
shade to a cow,
berries to a bird,
beauty to its surroundings,
health to its neighbors,
branches for the fire,
leaves for the soil,
asking nothing in return,
in total harmony with the wind and the rain.

How much can I learn from a tree!
The tree is my church,
the tree is my temple,
the tree is my mantra,
the tree is my poem and my prayer.

— Satish Kumar

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
— William Shakespeare, As You Like It

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
— John Fowles

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which
you can never learn from masters.
— Saint Bernard

Climb the mountains and
get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow
into you as sunshine
flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you,
and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
— John Muir

Give me a land of boughs in leaf,
a land of trees that stand;
where trees are fallen there is grief;
I love no leafless land.
— A.E. Housman

Here's a handy Arcadia. Let's go in.
. . . Loamy smell, damp clumps
of humus, encroaching blunt leaves -- and this
Latinate taxonomy in old brown ink. No,
go ahead -- I'll loiter a bit. A deep
breath. Roots, darkness. Another. What
fills me? Unself fill me.
— 'Botanical Gardens' by Don Coles

Forest equals crop
Scenery equals recreation
Public equals money.
— The shopkeeper's view of nature.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.
I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life.
— Henry David Thoreau