Trees Have Much To Teach Us

 

"Then here’s to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who stands in his pride alone;
And still flourish he, a hale green tree,
When a hundred years are gone!"

-Henry Fothergill Chorley

  “And into the forest I go, 

to lose my mind and find my soul” 

-John Muir 

Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,
with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where
I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

 -Marie Howe

 

"In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it..."

-Wendell Berry

 

Click here to read the whole of Chorley's poem about the oak.

Click here to read the rest of Wendell Barry's poem 'The Sycamore' and here to listen to it set to music.

Click here for the rest of Marie Howe's poem 'The Copper Beech'.

Click here to find out more about what trees can teach us. 

Writing prompts:

• Do you know anyone, like the 'brave old oak' who is still 'flourishing' after many years? Describe them in your writing.
  
• Write about where you go to 'lose your mind and find your soul'.
• Where do you 'practice being alone'? Write about that place for six minutes. 
• Write about someone you know who has managed to heal themselves, like the sycamore, after being wounded by life events.