the blessing of a tree

"I am vertical...but I would rather be horizontal.

I am not a tree with my root in the soil

Sucking up minerals and motherly love

So that each March I may gleam into leaf,

 

Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed

Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,

Unknowing I must soon unpetal.

 

Compared with me, a tree is immortal

And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,

And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

 

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

 

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them--

Thoughts have gone dim.

 

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

 

Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me."

 

in "I am Vertical" by Sylvia Plath.

 

thank you so much for the wonderful poem dear Lara!

 

 

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after taking a nap under a huge banyan tree in the back area of Sri Ramanashram I woke up finding this little leaf on my stomach. It must have come from the upper portions of this gigantic tree finding its way through all layers or branches and canopy.

 

 

 

Done