Clouds drift across the peaceful azure sky.

As I sit quietly under this tree,

I think of life’s big questions and then sigh.

I wonder if someday I’ll truly see.

As I sit quietly under this tree,

the sun is shining warm upon my face.

I wonder if someday I’ll truly see

the beauty hidden deep inside this place .

The sun is shining warm upon my face.

I stretch out, gladly soaking up the light,

the beauty hidden deep inside this place,

as arms of golden warmth embrace me tight.

I stretch out, gladly soaking up the light.

I think of life’s big questions and then sigh;

as arms of golden warmth embrace me tight,

clouds drift across the peaceful azure sky.

(c) 2017 - dustygrein

** This pantoum was written in iambic pentameter, and it seemed the perfect way to describe my feelings as I watched the clouds perform their slow-motion race overhead. The picture was taken as I sat under the tree and composed the lines.

The woody smell of juniper. Bright green needles drape off the branches shooting out from the gnarled, twisted bark of the trunk. The tree looks wise and ancient, solitary in this inhabitable desert landscape. Its berries sprung up after a recent spring rain and they contrast against the tree like water on a globe. At first glance, I think they're droplets leftover from the storm. The brown-grey-white-green-blue tree stands above the fiery red earth, the Navajo sandstone, and rises up from the mesa. It overlooks the desolate valley, and watches life come and go. It's withstood heat and droughts that killed other plants, animals, and even humans. It's survived wind, lightning, and hail and it's fed jackrabbits, coyotes, and birds. It thrives in this place of extremes, and gives, and lives on. I can't pinpoint what it is I find so intriguing about this tree, but it's enchanted me with its eternal presence, its invincibility, its resistance. I begin to feel the heat, the need for water and shade. I am not adapted to the environment in the precise way that the juniper is and I reluctantly leave, but the tree remains on that plateau, resiliently grown out of the rocks, above the valley forever under the wide open sky. 

Visitors of trees,

Crying in the wind.

Flames wrapped around,

Crying out in pain.

Visions of trees,

Waving their branches.

Axes cutting deep,

Crying out in pain.

Visions of trees,

Smiling with their leaves.

Kids climbing all over,

Crying out in joy.

Visions of trees,

Waving their branches.

Animals living,

Crying out in joy.