Tree of Life 6 - Australia and home again

This week we looked at Aboriginal creation myths and beliefs around the Tree of Life theme. In Australia the Guloi or plum tree is one of their native sacred trees .

The Guloi  is another tree of knowledge. This tree is not forbidden to be consumed but is instead encouraged. The Guloi represents passing knowledge and culture from parents to child and so forth through the generations. Many, if not most, aboriginal stories and myths are land-centred, and reflect that interconnectedness with all of existence, that reciprocity between all, that should not be lost.

The land owns us; we don’t own the land.
The land owns us; we don’t own the land.
We are part of the land.

Branches

Judy

I’m here, hanging

I’m here, waiting

Shall I hold on?

Or shall I drop?

I think I’ll sit here

Hanging and waiting.

 ******

Travelling branches reach the end of the line

Twigs diverted – inconsequential for a while

Like life – destination unknown.

Sonia 

Roots

Judy

What are you rooted in?

I am rooted in coal

The endless drudgery

of struggling for survival

I am rooted in Chapel

And song and poems

I am rooted in Aunties, Uncles, Cousins

At times the roots are always there

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.

Reach for the Stars

Tasting the gentleness of the dark night and the stars

I travelled with them through light years

Tiptoeing on the edge of the universe

Embracing the void.

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.