What do the Trees say to you?

As I sit here and watch the birds fly around outside, I wonder what do they hear? What guides them through their day? Is it the simple noises we hear, or is there more?

I’m going to get right to the point because there are some poems I want to add. What do we hear? Can we hear more if we focus on hearing more? Can the planet speak to us and can we hear it? I think we can hear the planet, it’s as simple as having the ears to hear.

I think many of us are so busy and preoccupied with daily living that we have forgotten how to listen to the sweet, soft whisper of nature. We can train ourselves to hear nature again, but we must direct our focus and attention on it.

I wanted to add these poems that I read for the first time today, I want to share the beauty in the soul who wrote them. These are poems from Hermann Hesse’s Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte [Trees: Reflections and Poems]

 “Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.”

“A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.”

“When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.”