The girl’s hand is already carved in questions
and so she believes the same of the tree.
There is a particular green of old trees who know dry thoughts even as the world is soaked. The trees swallow light, one sigh of it at a time, the feathers of the sun inhaled every day. The girl does not know how sweet this is: the song of old growth. The girl’s palm is already carved in questions and so she believes the same of the tree’s rough bark, traces the lines to learn the tree’s troubled heart. But the tree has encoded light. And light. And light. Enough. More than enough. The tree is entirely alive. Human bodies hold memories outside our brains, the girl’s phone announces. The Pope says Notre Dame being re-opened is a prophecy of goodness. The tree just inhales. •
I wrote this brief prose poem before reading The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, which gives you an idea of how excited I was to learn a bit more of the science of trees communicating, storing memory, and building networks. It’s incredible, how adaptable trees are over centuries, despite not being able to move from the place they’re in. (The community they have is essential to their survival; it’s almost impossible to not slip into metaphor.)
What is your favourite tree fact? I’d love to hear it.
More tree-pieces from the archives (posts older than five months are only visible to paid subscribers; it’s a “thank you” to them):
What empty space exists around desire?
In a café, a woman insists that her friend take food off her plate. Each time the friend refuses, the woman murmurs, “it’s too much, it’s too much.”
Van Gogh’s “Almond Blossoms” is a tree felled
I tried, twice, to paint this, we all want to chew a corner of this big thing he made, say, keep us alive, turquoise sky. Weeks before the bullet, all he painted was pink joy. A woman steps over scorched branches to lay a wreath for the patron saint of paper birds. Three boys tear bread for pigeons. The almond blossoms are rubbed white by years …
Toothbrush tree benediction
What we had in Arua was the sky. To release our small and big sounds into. It took them all. And when we tired, it never did. It held everything in kindness. I have found two other places in the world that feel like home in this way: the dry, abrasive dust. The exposed, exposing sun. The open sky. How much more it was, than any of us. How like a benevol…
I am obsessed with the artwork in this piece! Stunning 😍
Stunning ♥️ (And I came here to say this must have been inspired by your reading — why am I no longer surprised at being wrong?? Haha)
My favorite tree fact is that the crowns of the Redwoods are their own biome, in a sense, and have an ecosystem and species unknown anywhere else. They’re so cool!