Continuous, inevitable and inescapable.
Tree Planting
Rhian
Today’s the day I will be
Rooted firmly to the ground
Enjoying the moist refreshing soil
Eager to begin my stages of development.
Pocketed in a deep chasm
Of lowly birth, but lovingly caressed
And then covered in Earth’s kisses
Not knowing my destination
Though the journey is looking upward every day
I had been especially chosen by someone
Nurtured during a Queen’s Jubilee
Growing, perhaps to be fit for a king.
Sonia
We also read about Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920 - 1993)
Oodgeroo was born in 1920 on Stradbroke Island (the island is called Minjerriba by the aboriginal people), Queensland, of the Noonuccal people of the Yuggera group. She was best known for her poetry, although she was also an actress, writer, teacher, artist and a campaigner for Aboriginal rights.
Here's one of her poems:
Municipal Gum
by Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls
Here you seems to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen--
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?
To this we attempted some "healing" poems by way of a reply to this understandable anger.
And, to close the circle of our virtual journey we returned to Blighty with A E Houseman's uplifting poem Loveliest of Trees.
Loveliest of trees
A E Houseman (1857 - 1936)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
And before we go I have to add one more poem about our relationship with trees - this was a recurring idea throughout the sessions on Tree of Life - our affinity with trees and sense of identification with them.
A marvellous poem by Robert Frost:
TREE AT MY WINDOW
Robert Frost
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground.
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.
My thanks go to all the writers who took part in this project which was a joy to be part of:
Sonia, Rhian, Yvette, Paula, Annie, Chris, Helen, Judy, Hilary,
and - a Special Guest Appearance by Maggie.
