Sunday Trees

x   Died and gone to heaven ...

...  trees in the new garden.      x

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Sunday Trees

Two poplars and a spiral staircase next to the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.  

(three, actually)

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Sunday Trees

Sunday Trees

like sculpture, don't you think?

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Sunday Trees

 

Sunlit Flats

Walk with me along the smooth pavement of the footway

where the sun makes zebra-patterns with the tree shadows

and I will show you the light glittering on upper-storey windows of silent flats –

voices are never raised

Here the white paint always gleams:

dustless Saturday afternoons wait

while the natives (dressed by Harvey Nicks) drape on sofa and mantelpiece

and the cutlery comes in sets of twelve

A string quartet or baroque guitar hushes the hallway

free of cooking smells or greasy flyers for take-away.

The sun shines on upper flats

like winter glaciers in the Alps –

Do you see from the pavement it looks pristine?

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Sunday Trees

Brought to you from sunny London ...

... winter tracery at St Mary Abbots Church, Kensington High Street.

Spring is creeping into London.  We walked to our hotel through the quiet back streets  of emerging spring.

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Sunday Trees

voices from the whirlwind

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Sunday Trees

I am sure there is a haiku hidden amongst these shadows...


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Sunday Trees

This painting hangs in my parents' house in Melbourne, although they bought it in Canada, about 30 years or so ago.  It has been very hot in Melbourne recently, and I can imagine my parents looking at the snow with longing. 

No snow here in Exile, but plenty of dust swirling around in eddies and banking up against anything it can stick to.

Sunday Trees

The Tree of Life:

This is the tree on our bedroom floor.  It is a wool and silk carpet, woven in Qum, Iran (formerly Persia) and is about fifty or sixty years old.  The 'tree of life' motif is ancient and found world-wide: from China to Egypt and even in North America.  It symbolises life, immortality, fertility and the boundlessness of the natural world.  Some elaborate systems use the tree of life as a symbol of the Earth and cosmos, male-female balance and so on.  There are also some  esoteric schemes which see the tree of life as the secret of eternity.

In the case of our rug, I think the central scene symbolises the paradise of the 'hortus inclusus' - the enclosed or walled garden.  The concept of a separate world - Eden, or an oasis - as an enclosed garden began to make more sense to me when we moved to the deserts of the Middle East.  The harshness of the landscape and the climate is thrown into contrast by the softness and fertility of the enclosed garden.

The rug has a strong border depicting buildings in Qum, but also serving as the 'wall' of the garden.  In the safe space inside, birds flourish, flowers bloom and the tree offers cool shade and the promise of life.  Of course, it is a fantastic tree, blooming with myriad and disparate flowers (including dianthus, hyacinth, and rose).  The sinuous trunk weaves across the space, an arabesque symbolising the infinite nature of of the spiritual life, while the birds offer music and the freedom of flight.

You are welcome to come and sit in my garden, take sweet tea and dates, and listen to the poet's song.

x

Sunday Trees

prunus serrula

Up on the Wall

 In an ancient garden, heavy with whispering Roman shades

stands a totem to northern sprites, woad-dabbed irregulars and

the heart-beat of a tree.

Here the mist hisses through leaves,

Sol  raises his tired face against

the windflowing down from the Glens

and salutes the old warriors.

prunus serrula, Tibetan Cherry
photo taken at Chesters Walled Garden
nr Hexham, Northumberland

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Sunday Trees

Continuing the theme of trees related to home, this is a very special tree.  It is an ancient swamp willow. Originally it had five huge limbs, each about 1 metre in diametre.  A severe storm brought down one of the limbs, frightening my parents into having them all lopped back. 

This photograph would have been taken in the late 1960s, and shows the tree-fort construction of my brother.

Swamp willow, Toronto Canada, c 1968

In the right background you can just make out the 'play house' my father built for my brother and me.  It was more elegantly constructed than the tree-fort (my brother was for all things military), fashioned from sheets of 4x8 plywood, with left over asphalt roof tiles.  The front door knob was a large wooden thread spool, and it had two hinged windows you could prop open, one at the side and one at the back.  We built a little reclaimed brick terrace to the right of the house which nestled under an ancient and generous damson plum tree.

In a complete departure, I offer you an earlier structure:

Isabel & brother, c 1964

Sunday Trees

Jacaranda, camellia and oleander, on the nature strip, in front of our house in Sydney.  Not strictly a tree, perhaps, but indulge me. just this once?

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Sunday Trees

eucalyptus, Victoria

If trees were born, this is how they would emerge.  A new tree for a new year.

Best wishes for Health and Happiness during the coming year and

Happy Birthday to Primus  and UV

Isabel xx

the birthday boys (22 years ago)

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Sunday Trees - Christmas Day

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Happy Christmas

Isabel xxx

Peace and Goodwill toAll

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Sunday Trees

ancient olive on the banks of Le Gard, Pont du Gard,
Rhone France

An ancient tree for one of the oldest days of the year.

An Ancient Tree

We could believe that your kind has waited here

since a footsore legionary, ordered in to carry cut stone,

ate his lunch of gravel-bread, boiled egg and olives,

in the manner of footsore legionaries,

spun seeds to the sun,

stretched out under a plank of scaffolding,

leaving the remains of lunch and resinous wine,

snoring fit to frighten the birds from the cliff-edge,

and summoned back to work the afternoon watch,

left lunch and stones for tourists to pluck over two thousand solstices later. 

Poets will believe you descended from such legionary ancestors.

xx

Sunday Trees

eucalyptus, Melbourne Victoria

I could fly to eternity in your arms

Your dress slipping to reveal your smooth skin:

pink dappled and parchment pale

You, who hold your arms aloft, waltzing for decades with

parrot and possum.

Empress of the Nyads and of Dryads the Queen:

Your grace a standard we mortals aspire to,

Should we have the sense to look up.

xx

Sunday Trees

Hampton Court, England

Don't you think they look like Birthday Umbrellas?  Happy Birthday Dad!

x

Sunday Trees

Sunday Trees + Experimental Tree Plantation

Eighty Years

You’ve stood for eighty years, rooted

searching for your lost love
limbs outstretched in an empty embrace.

As seedlings, after the fire,

did you entwine,
only to have your better half,
your other self,
twin, mate, comrade
taken from you?

Now, like a lover sensing a cooling bed,

who in his sleep seeks across the vacant air,
your limbs await.

Such a tree ...

Such a tree as you could lead the march from Birnam Wood to Dunsinane:

your limbs lifted in signal forward, victory is ours.

Then again, your whirling arms could be a frozen dervish, mid-spin, mid-ecstasy,

enraptured in worship of your Lord.

Or you could be some Nessie of the hillside,

siren limbs luring sailors to the woods of their doom.

Perhaps you are the cursed one, forgotten,

longing for a supernatural reprieve, the maid who roused jealousy in a fatal flirt?

But no, you are a tree: the spirit of these ancient mountains,

ancestor, life-giver, cradle of a secret world. 

You stand high amongst your lesser sprouts,

mere saplings to your mighty rule.

Experimental Tree Plantation

If you would like to offer your own response to this Sunday Tree (or the previous ones), as an experiment, I am offering a ‘Mr Linky’.  Please link your ‘tree post’ rather than your blog, and link back to this Sunday Tree.

I look forward to wandering in your woods.

Isabel

PS I've never used this Linky-thing so only hope it works!  If it doesn't leave me a message and I'll try again.