Forest Song

Forest Song

Lean back easy to the soil
let your elbows root
watch the clouds go by
for a few weeks.

Curl, wrap around a stump
reach your fingers to the sky
when it rains you can
open your eyes.

Stay, wait until it’s cold,
blossom underneath the waning
moonlight, where the
hemlocks come to sing.

Here, deep inside the night
listen for the creek
in the Earth where the
memories fit together.

* * *

Copyright © 2009 Jade Leone Blackwater
www.jadeleoneblackwater.com

Love Affair with the Santa Barbara Moreton Bay Fig Tree

And then I saw you, silhouetted on the sidewalk.

Like a thousand eyes watching, no part of me left unseen.

Limb by limb, shoulder by shoulder, learning you petal by petal.

Snake-like and certain, our tongues smell earth, breeze, ocean mist.

A fence may stand between us, but I still feel your electricity;

gaze on your sweet under-places luminous with sunrise.

I reach up as you reach up, bend back and breathe in;

shimmy in the warmth of new day and clap, extend a fresh leaf on each bright finger.

I take pictures of your curves so I can stare at you alone, smooth my finger along forbidden branches; sigh.

Your infinite patience dwarfs me. I leave you smaller than I began.

Quietly I admire your persistent fruitfulness, your marriage of mathematics and magic.

We listen closely together to hear above the highway, small moments flicker as shadow follows shadow.

I want to sit back to trunk with you; exhale, close my eyes and wait for understanding.

* * *

© 2008 Jade Leone Blackwater

For The Festival of the Trees 28: Art and Arboreality

October 1, 2008.

The Festival of the Trees is a monthly blog carnival hosted at a different blog each month. The theme for the Festival of the Trees 28 is "Art and Arboreality", which will be published on Wednesday, October 1, 2008.

I'm still accepting a few late entries, so if you would like to participate just follow these three easy steps:

1. Let a tree inspire you today.



2. Share your creation at your blog.



3. Email me your submission: jadeblackwater [at] brainripples [dot] com.

PS - Special preference given to all you fortunate folks seeing those beautiful autumn colors!!! Won't some kind, northerly blogger send me a sumptuous sugar maple in autumn color?