Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully.

If it’s denied an adequate instrument (and we’re all denied that, at birth, some more than others) out comes . . . poetry, i.e., truth forced out through a restricted opening.

That’s all poetry is, really:

Something odd, coming out.

Normal speech, overflowed.

A failed attempt to do justice to the world.

The poet proves that language is inadequate by throwing himself at the fence of language and being bound by it. Poetry is the resultant bulging of the fence.

George Saunders, Swim In Pond In Rain

Branching Streams
Flow In Darkness

Shunryū Suzuki

We Are
But Hunks
Of Wood

Little People

I Am
Butt-Hunk
Of “Would!”

P Willy

He said, “How many of you feel like human beings tonight?” And then he said, “How many of you feel like animals?”

And, the thing is, everyone cheered after the animals part, but I cheered after the human beings part.

Cause I did not know that there was a second part to the question.

I said, “Yes I do feel like a human. I do not feel like a tree.”

Mitch Hedberg

Mist crept through the sub-alpine firs, coating them with a sheen.

Light-refracting droplets held entire worlds.

Branches burst with emerald new growth over a fleece of jade needles.

Such a marvel, the tenacity of the buds to surge with life every spring, to greet the lengthening days and warming weather with exuberance, no matter what hardships were brought by winter.

Suzanne Simard, Finding Mother Tree

Out the door of my writing shed are some things. What things? Yes, exactly. It’s up to me to tell you, and in telling you, I will shortly be making them. How I tell them is what they’ll be.

Are those “shaggy sad redwoods, speaking of the long defeat that is life”? “Proud, magnificent red-brown friends of my working days, connecting me with innumerable generations past”? “A stand of redwoods”? “Some trees”?

Depends on the day, depends on my mind. All these descriptions are true, and none of them is, at all.

George Saunders, Swim In Pond In Rain

What wickedly wondrous webs we weave, when waffling withers while we’re wandering wherever, wondering whatever, wisening whenever with wide-eyed, warm-hearted, whole-bodied whimsical wanderlust…

Where weakening-withering-weeping willow withstood whipping-whooshing-whorling windy-wintery-westerly weather without, wakening wormwood Whiskery Willy wriggles within—wryly, writhingly, winningly—wielding warmly-worded whatchamacallit weaponry—winking, whisking, whispering—what wonderousness when welcoming—woo-hoo! wowee-zowee!—wishy-washy-whooshy wicky-wacky-wild way-widening womb-wrapping warmth.

P Willy

Biggie: Are there any bears in these woods?

Joe: Hope so—a bear would feed us for a month.

Biggie: Perhaps we can disillusion it.

A bear who doesn’t believe in anything is easier to bring down.

Joe: I guess—I agree with that.

Brain: This guy is all in my head.

Biggie: Do you need to leave? There’s no shame in it.

Joe: There may be shame in it, that’s up to you—but please leave anyway.

Brain: Leaves are falling—looks like an august time for me to make like a leaf and float gently down to meet my friends on the forest floor.

Lest I fret foiling foliage-frolicking for fellow-floating fortuitiously-feeling fiercely-fleeting friendly freefallers…

Dappled light on leaves may be a leopard in a tree. These are the patterns that awaken us to our surroundings. Each of us harbors a homeland, a landscape we naturally comprehend.

By understanding the dependability of place, we can anchor ourselves as trees.

One night, a Maasai elder and I sit around a fire telling stories. Sparks enter the ebony sky and find their places among stars.

“My people worship trees,” he says. “It was the tree that gave birth to the Maasai. Grasses are also trustworthy. When a boy is beaten for an inappropriate act, the boy falls to the ground and clutches a handful of grass. His elder takes this gesture as a sign of humility. The child remembers where the source of his power lies.”

Terry Tempest Williams, Unspoken Hunger

Emily: You know what I love about trees?

The root system.

Under the earth, it’s just as big as the tree.

It’s like a mirror image but hidden.

So as you and I sit beneath this tree, we’re actually between two trees.

One tree we can see, and the other is upside down, invisible—like a secret.