The following is taken from Brainpickings by Mary Popova…
“Aside from the appearance of a tree by day or night, is it not kin of the human family with its roots in the earth and its arms stretching toward the sky as if to seek and to know the great mystery?” the artist Art Young wondered in the 1920s in the brief preface to his stunning Rorschach silhouettes of trees at night. Artists, poets, and philosophers have long turned to trees as a clarifying and consolatory force for our human struggles, from William Blake’s most beautiful metaphor to Walt Whitman’s reverence for their wisdom to Martin Buber’s arboreal existentialism.
Still, I have encountered no lovelier celebration of trees than the one Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935–January 17, 2019) offers in her poem “When I Am Among the Trees,” originally published in 2006, later included in her farewell gift to the world, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (public library):
WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver
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.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
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.”
