My Friends, The Trees

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Sometimes it can feel as if our world has come to an end or is closing down on us like the curtain on a Shakespearean tragedy.  

I have often felt that way, even as a child (when no one took depression in children very seriously if at all) and have spent the best part of a lifetime finding ways of restoring a view of life and self that gives rise to optimism rather than pessimism.

Creative therapy (writing) and reading have played a vital part in my battle to beat depression, but it is nature that has proved my salvation.  While not even the finest arts can copy it, a troubled mind, body, and spirit can do far, far, worse than try. So it has been with mine since my partner died even though we were together but a few years and it was a long time ago. My mother’s death, too, affected me deeply. 

Yet, the trees remain, the same trees we walked among, talked among, and rested among to enjoy leafy kaleidoscopes and create our own; trees now bursting with life, now all but dying only to thrive again according to time and season. Such is the stoicism of nature from which the human body-mind-spirit can take heart if it will but pause long enough to look and see, listen and learn…

MY FRIENDS, THE TREES

I never felt so alone

as once you were gone,

drab days stretching

on and on like dirt tracks

leading nowhere

but deeper into woodlands

where no sun shining,

birds singing or rabbits

teasing the eye

Then a day came, 

long after you were gone,

I chanced to spot

a chick sparrow fly the nest,

hover uncertainly,

fledgling wings in a flap,

but only briefly

before soaring up, up,

and away 

I followed its flight,

spotted a trickle of sunlight

bursting through trees

whose spring leaves

dripped rainbows on the eye,

restoring colour 

to a world left colourless 

since you painted me

out of it

Suddenly, the inner ear 

hears once more, inner eye

can see again,

empty heart starting to fill

(if slowly) with joys 

of spring, reawakening

happier times, 

trying out heart strings

and retuning 

Oh, but less lonely now,

befriended by trees, lifted

by ages-old tales

of love and peace, songs

celebrating life,

poems reflecting that death

must wait its turn

while we relish the thrill

of first flight

Sparrow flies into tree,

possibly same bird, same tree,

but not the same me, 

loath to leave my friends,

the trees, yet anxious

as they to remind the world 

it’s spring, 

body, mind, and spirit 

overflowing

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014