Cascadia Forest Defenders Treesitters Page

healing poems

Cascadia Forest Defenders Treesitters Page

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Cascadia Forest Defenders Treesitters Page

This magazine supports the efforts of the treesitters in the Old Growth Canopy. "The wind sings constant at 40 mph sometimes and the trees support us -- they connect us to the elevated canopy. Stellar Jays are the migratory neighbors these weeks & the Spotted Owl too. I feel part of a web -- literally -- we have 35 trees tied into our sites up here." Sqirl (Red Cloud Thunder, Eugene Oregon November 10, 1999)

TO THE TREESITTERS 6

The trees don't try
____to get out of growing
they dig in their roots
____& reach for a piece
____of the sky

The trees don't run away
____when they see people coming
They've been growing
____longer than we have
& have grown more generous
____than we've had time to

Early humans spent
____a lot of time in trees
listening to their secrets
Now the trees are calling us back
____Maybe we're ready
____to hear more

Water doesn't worry about drowning
____Fire has no fear of burning up
The soil hasn't given up on sprouting
____The wind isn't afraid
____of being blown away
& you don't lose
____any sleep over becoming
____lost in the wild

A sunset; Actual size=240 pixels wide

Postcard from Sprig. Eugene, Oregon. November 2000.

SACRED GROVES 2

Whenever I hear some talking of dinosaurs
____I can't help thinking back
to a previous time when
____the Earth was ruled by the giant trees
If you think it's a joke
____first ask the feathered dinosaurs
to be found building their nests & singing
____where birds come in from the sky
or ask the trees they keep going back to
In the Garden of Eden story
____the tree of knowledge is said
to have employed a reptile to do its talking
____& what it wanted to say was
____Eat my fruit & see what grows
According to this story we must all live
____on knowledge or on something else

When we remember how
____our own bodies are constructed
around a system that delivers
____the goods to whatever
remains of the garden within us
& then recall that the reptilian part
____of our brains resides on the stem
this story sounds more like history
____Now we can all take a deep breath
because no giant tree ever reigned by force
____but by the experience
____of living itself

Now may be another time for being heard
____but some things are so immense
that it doesn't seem possible
____to put them into anything like words
One cure for speechlessness is thinking
____about the difference it would've made
if all the sacred groves were growing now
____where they were planted in the past
Especially those dry & angry spaces that are
____inhabited by those who keep busy
____expelling themselves from Paradise

tree postcard

Postcard from Dirt. Cascadia Forest Defenders, PO Box 11122, Eugene, Oregon 97440. March 30, 1999.