'...into the green burn of silence, the about to happen...' Photo: by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.
The counsel of trees
Poem by Dana Littlepage Smith
Live adventurously. When choices arise, do you take the way that offers the fullest opportunity for the use of your gifts in the service of God and the community ? Let your life speak. When decisions have to be made, are you ready to join with others in seeking clearness, asking for God’s guidance and offering counsel to one another?
Advices & queries 27
Not attainment. And not always upward:
the pendulous rag-ends of autumn on Aspen.
The Monterey pine, wind-dandled, three-needled,
giving itself away. Adventure: no more and no less
than arriving. Again. And again. Venturing on.
As the Chestnut lifts its candles of May
into the green burn of silence, the about to happen
always happening. Works of water; trees fountaining.
Sap in the service of being. A move to the core-field
of rooting. The great give-away, releasing
a treasure-hold of minerals. Gravity’s dark direction
into a sky reach and sweep of sun fire.
A carillon of rings, pith and leaf, blood coloured,
plum bruised, verdancy. Growth towards something
unnamed. Irradiated by light, ice… every weather.
The Siberian crab apple in the cemetery swept up
in April blossom like a bride. In December
snow shattered. Sufferings met.
Sought clearings. The way of chemical change,
the generative rot of having lived.
Of living into dying.
