{"id":2517,"date":"2006-03-19T20:03:11","date_gmt":"2006-03-20T03:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:44:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:44:26","slug":"theres-always-looking-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2006\/03\/19\/theres-always-looking-after\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s Always Looking After"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s Always Looking After<\/strong><\/p>\n

A tree is a guardian angel.<\/p>\n

Trees talk to us, they
\nwhisper stories and secrets,
\nslip us clues to universal mysteries.<\/p>\n

Do you see the forest, or the trees?
\nSap murmurs up the trunk in spring. Listen.
\nThe apple falls (not far from the tree), its
\ncrisp honey tang for the taking. Notice
\nhow the air changes when you approach
\na woods; the fresh, spicy scent of leaves
\nand needles performing their gift of tonglen.
\nHandle limbs gently. Despite their
\ncoarseness, trees are benign as babies.<\/p>\n

Autumn. My favorite elegy. Red orange yellow
\neach color a note, a symphony of glorious
\ndeath. Gaia’s last hurrah before hibernation.<\/p>\n

Glorious death. The nativity of Jesus in
\nBethlehem was honored by his parents, wise
\nshepherds, angels — even animals. But not
\none tree except for the remnant serving
\nas his crib. Look what happened to him.
\nWhereas Buddha, under a Bodhi tree,
\nreceived the gift of enlightenment.<\/p>\n

Beware. Trees are destroyers. When touched
\nby lightning (not an angel), in a rhumba
\nwith the wind, trees release limbs as
\ngeckos lose their tails. They surrender
\nresponsibility, abandon stability,
\ncrush what lies beneath. A shard
\nof wood thrown by a tornado can kill you.<\/p>\n

How many angels are there? They number
\nmore than all the leaves on all the trees
\nsince Big Time began. Earth — head
\nof a pin on which all trees dance.
\nThose trees, they krunk in a hot minute.
\nWe just don’t see them. They move so fast.<\/p>\n

A baby is born. A sapling takes root.
\nAs roots grow, her neurons multiply.
\nThey amputated the tree in our yard
\nthe other day. Am I going to die now?<\/p>\n

A tree is a livin’ thin’, wif it\u2019s own
\nvarmintality, expressed by it\u2019s shape,
\ntexture, locashun, seasonal variashuns,
\nshade\/sun alterashun, th’ emoshuns it
\ninvokes in th’ obsarver, th’ memo’ies
\nit stimulates in th’ obsarver. A tree
\nlives as long as a hoomin, o’ longer,
\nan’ faces th’ elements day-in an’
\nday-out. To sacrifice a tree is a kind
\nof euthanasia. A tree thet yo’ plant
\ntoday will outlive yo’, an’ affeck other
\nhoomins in th’ future junerashuns\u2026 but
\nwill only be thar IF yo’ an’ yer projuny
\nown th’ lan’ on which th’ tree thrives.
\nOwn SOME lan’, somewhar, an’ put trees
\non it, an’ viset an’ watch them grow.<\/p>\n

The ancient forests of knowledge
\nhidden in dusky, musty library stacks
\nhave become my land. My mind, my tree
\nof knowledge, thrives. It is all I have.<\/p>\n

On this moonless night everything
\ntelescopes, clarifies. Brightness erupts
\nfrom inky black. The dark night of the soul
\nis really a form of enlightenment.<\/p>\n

I fall on my knees, praying to No God.
\nThe god of no. I sway in the wind, yearning
\nto be struck, to plummet, to become the abyss
\nthat annihilates, that looks into me. Oh,
\nthe ecstasy of descent! I cry for it.<\/p>\n

Mindful One, she thinks too much. She dwells
\ninside her head, sips the ink of books too
\noften. For all her lofty talk about meaning
\nand nature, she lives indoors, estranged.
\nReconciliation is possible. The priest
\nintones, you are dust and to dust you shall
\nreturn. So it shall be. A reunion.<\/p>\n

Yes! A gorgeous reunion. A gorgeous death.
\nIt shall be as it is, unless it is as it shall
\nbe. Remember, nascentes morimur. The voice is
\nrelentless, paralyzing. Death, inevitable from
\nthe beginning of my existence. My destiny, our
\ndestiny, is to become nothing. <\/p>\n

Not so, whisper the trees. Willow weeps over my
\nrigid despair. A pine tree caresses my hair.
\nYou do not become nothing. You become everything.<\/p>\n

The body becomes a corpse. The corpse rots, feeds
\nmaggots and beetles, enriches the soil. A squirrel
\nforaging embeds a nut, forgets it. The nut germinates.
\nA sapling grows, slowly. Outside of time. Watching over.
\nWitnessing the Mystery. There’s always looking after.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s Always Looking After A tree is a guardian angel. Trees talk to us, they whisper stories and secrets, slip us clues to universal mysteries. Do you see the forest, or the trees? Sap murmurs up the trunk in spring. Listen. The apple falls (not far from the tree), its crisp honey tang for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,28,16,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aenigmas","category-humanities","category-nature","category-poetry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10326,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions\/10326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}