Poets Salon: The Tree of Life

POETS SALON

Tree of Life by Nina Reynolds Fette

– 1/09/19

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

The tree of life…conversation lifts over the mountains, we become quiet epiphytes on the tree of time. Time’s tree is covered with orchids. We bloom, light filtering between petals that lift over the canopy of all we have ever said. Whispering over bridges through tunnels, we weave a net, made of friends.

~ Kathabela

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Interconnected tree (Photo – Kathabela Wilson).

Sandi Pray

the old oak
this aging hand
skin
touching skin
our sameness

the shush of leaves
on a summer night
long ago
i dreamed i was
the child of trees

morning mist
hearing the river flow
through my fingertips
maybe long ago
i was a willow

Sandi Pray lives a quiet life in the wilds of the North Carolina mountains and river wetlands of North Florida. She says: “A beautiful Tree of Life made its home with me today. My very talented friend Nina Reynolds Fette of North Carolina created it for us out of recycled glass and bottles!” Retired now, she spends much of each day outside with nature where she hones her senses and expresses the interconnectedness of nature in beautiful haiku, tanka and haiga. Her selected tanka in our ‘Poets Salon’ were part the anthology Earth: Our Common Ground, published by Skylark editor Claire Everett. The anthology was created as a strong statement of defense of the earth against fracking and abuse of the environment, part of the proceeds go to environmental defense causes.

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Corvallis forest (Photo – Sharon Hawley).

Sharon Hawley

Sending Me Off

persimmon cookies by Erika
broccoli given to Kathabela
returned to me cooked and seasoned
pears by Joyce
music by Rick
chilled soup by Pauli
like drifts of snow in Whitehorse
such abundant send-off
to such austere and lonely beauty
I want them all to come

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love and support of
dear friends and family
sustains us as

into the world we move
solitary, autonomous
clutching mother’s hem
to right our balance, take a breath
then step away on our own

Sharon Hawley is an adventurer poet who lives in Pasadena. She has traveled all over the USA and Canada by bike, and foot, seeking out the wilderness in unusual and challenging places. This time she’s driving her jeep to Fairbanks, Alaska through the deep winter. She feels especially as she departs from her SoCal poets and stops in Corvallis, Oregon, the interconnectedness of friends. Her journey aims toward Fairbanks, where a kindred spirit niece is waiting for her companionship in the cold of winter! You can follow Sharon’s adventures here.

Some notes she has made so far along the way, as she stops to visit a friend in Corvallis, Oregon: “The deep woods, just ten miles from his home, after a fine drive on a country road. Admiring the seemingly dead oak trees, we know they are alive because of brown leaves under our feet, leaves that died to become the tree’s food to grow more leaves—the trees’ full acceptance of life and death—example of how to live.”

“Have you ever seen the forest on a tree? These oaks provide housing for thousands of friendly renters. Epiphytes don’t sap energy from the tree; they just hang there in harmony with their host.”

“Into the woods just outside Corvallis, Oregon, we feel deep in the Amazon, surrounded and covered over by trees, moss and hanging epiphytes. A few sprinkles, but mostly typical winter overcast and high humidity, with temperatures around forty. Some people find days like this depressing and bad for their respiratory conditions, but it seemed to me just fine. And when the sun pops out, the beauty is truly inspiring.”

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♣ We welcome and encourage your response, especially in the form of a short poem, by leaving a comment below.

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