“…it charmsmere eyesight to believeThe nearest thing not treesIs the sky, into whichThe trees reach, openingtheir luminous new leaves…and thought finds restbeneath a brightened treeIn which, unseen, a warblerfeeds and sings. His song’sSmall shapely melodyComes down irregularly,as all light’s givings come.” Sabbaths 1999 III”

“A tree forms itself in answerto its place and the light.Explain it how you will, the onlything explainable will beyour explanation.” Sabbaths 1999 IV”

“There is ebb and flow. Leaving and coming. Flight and fall. Sing and silent. Reaching and reached.”

“Eyes are shaped like leaves, mouths are shaped like leaves, and goodbyes are shaped like leaves. But my love, that is shaped like a tree.”

“Beings Trees in Autumn
These trees in Buddhist saffron robes renouncing everything,
becoming naked without fear,
in win that is a part of them, disclose a beauty in this death, become new shapes, interior.
To live they cannot hoard;
This losing, too, is growth.
New shapes emerge, new vision clears. Surrender strengthens in the soul another song.This emptying is confidence
in springs, but more-a farthing in the growth that’s come before, a counting of the gifts
and then releasing one by one, so as to give again,
Knowing growth is not a season, but is in the root of things.
This is no losing,
but a becoming.
Coveting such openness
of limb and heart and hand, such bareness in the singing,
I only now discover that I want this wind, blowing where it will, within.”

“Go climb a tree, and don’t come down until you’ve reached the top”