09/21/11 Trees that listen

It was one of the triplet giant cottonwoods in the backyard, the one that most often gets my attention. I wanted to meditate, and so I put my arms around the tree for that moment, to stop and listen. Stillness. Then because I'm singing a lot this week, I just started singing something...the tree responded immediately. I felt something "pop" inside the tree, and it suddenly felt like the tree was showing me its whole life, the fibers from below the strength with which it holds its trunk, the swaying of branches so high above us (it's a mature tree-over 40 feet, I'd guess), I even felt the fluids moving below its bark-skin...The tree heard my song, then i was feeling the tree move and flex its muscles.

9/20-1/2/11

The distant barking of a dog....is it mournful? Almost, but maybe just punctuation in the calm of the night...Are someone's chickens being raided? Not in this neighborhood. Does it sound like the percussion in the jazz album you're listening to? You betcha.

9/20/11 Trees that heal themselves

The siberian elms in the backyard, dozens of them, most years have bare scraggly fingers scraping toward the sky from the woodlot. But this year they reach (I finally noticed tonight) they reach with full, bushy, plump, leafy limbs, healed, I'm sure, by the boatloads of rains we've had this year. Really, you would have thought most of them dead, but they've only been dry. This year, lots of moisture.

9/19/11 A truly misty morning...

Little beadlets of moisture, you don't know where they come from, they hang on you, make the fading brown grass greasy, dust everything with these tiny moist pellets, like teeny beads, elemental and new.