Humble Yourself at the Sight of the Tree

Humble yourself 20th November 2008

These leaves are movers, bending branches before the wind they bend toward the earth.
These leaves are like a giant green prey mantas...
Bow down I am hearing in the words of an old hippie song: "You got to humble, yourself at the sight of the tree"
"To know what it knows you got to bend down low and humble yourself at the tree - for we, shall, lift each other up, higher and higher we, shall lift each other up!" And I am thinking, what rituals have been born from the bowing and bending of the leaves and branches, bending before the earth, bending full with the breath and winds of God...these branches that sway and bow before the breeze...?
More than solar sails these leaves and branches are guides and story tellers.
Why did Buddha sit beneath a fig tree (Bodhi tree: Ficus religiosa)?
What inspiration did it bring him? It is written, "...after his Enlightenment, the Buddha spent a whole week in front of the tree, standing with unblinking eyes, gazing at it with gratitude."
What inspiration does it bring to all of us - with eyes unblinking in our quest to see?
Some sacred action here is communicated (commune created) - some transcending (transform sending)which in turn transforms the mind, lets us see another side... the side of the wind.

Leaves on a Green Tide

Leaves on a Green Tide 17th Nov 2008

If you could see the light in these leaves, the inter-layered half lings of shaded inbetweens that lift like sheets on a hills hoist; it is the sight of a green man sighing.
This stirring of some giant's pot, all of it the sensory probing and stamina of light and air feeding leaves which breathe and dance to the flexing of currents that eddy and froth all about them.
This current that passes and sometimes bends them in a turbulent motion of the unseen - I feel as though through the glass of a fishbowl I am watching, expecting brim and skip jack to gather, hoping to sight yellow-eyed, bright-eyed herring or mullet schooling drifting in the shallows...and somewhere distant, I can just make out their free forming of silver undersides that flex and twist when gravitating in the wash the shining in the green waves and currents beyond...
With each new wave the wash within the arboreal reef sends them careering...
With each new gust they spin and when the wind falls they're returned to their camouflage of leafy shades and depths - restored they drift and move and wait, for the returning of the current and tide...Through this window I watch them become leaves once more...a hills hoist of green beyond my window, waiting on the wind for their permission to tumble...