poetry of trees—facing destiny

Just before leaving Oakland I visit one of my favorite parks. I walk the path where my footprints have been erased many times. Yellow blossoms on a hundred-foot sycamore tree, bare of its leaves, stand before me and deserve attention. They don’t move, not a twitch in the cool breeze of an early spring day. There’s no turning away from their beauty. Their poetry should be memorized. So I sit to listen.

Slipping off my sandals, I dig my feet into the earth. The sun brightens. I imagine in ancient times hummingbirds hovering around the sycamore tree. Its yellow blossoms touched by honeybees long ago. The eyes of a deeper silence reveal that I am an heir to such beauty, an heir to the sycamore tree, the ancient hummingbird, and honeybees.

Thousands of years have passed since the death of the tree’s ancestors and yet it’s still possible to see them in the bark of the tree standing before me. It’s still possible to see my mother’s hands in mine. The imprints of the past are sustained, which means the beauty remains as life. Fate or destiny is often what we grapple with as human beings. We fight against a feeling that our lives are predetermined and that we have no control. Are my hands destined to do the same deeds as my mother’s? Will humans today do as humans did yesterday? These questions have been addressed time and time again. The yellow blossoms of the tree have been passed on throughout many centuries. But it isn’t the legacy of beauty we worry about in regards to destiny. We are worried about controlling our fates so we toss the bad and try to keep the good things we’ve inherited. We wish to create what we think is a life filled with treasures.

There are some scientists who are creating ways to bring forth the perfect human being. They manipulate in much the same way we do to manage our own lives. We discard the unwanted for a sense of perfection.

Is possessing my mother’s hands perfection? I don’t know. She was not perfect. Of course, I wouldn’t chop off my hands to eliminate the things my mother passed to me that caused suffering. So, what am I to do if I don’t discard, destroy, or eliminate? I use what causes suffering, what is imperfect, what is destined, as a portal to see that I’m an heir of awakening. We are awake even if we are blind to it. There’s no need to be in control if we’re awake. Controlling for a better fate is impossible. Predetermination means there’s life and there’s death. What’s in life is not sealed. To allow a predetermined life to unfold with everything and everyone in it, is to honor destiny and to honor the four-legged ancestors in us that took the first steps or the winged ones in us who took the first flight. Fate is not the end of the world. There’s no end of the world. There’s an evolution of the world as it becomes something unimaginable.

There’s infinite potential in human beings that is lost in trying to fool destiny. When we lose the mind that determines perfection, we can hear the poetry of trees. We can smell the fragrance and touch the ancestors of roses, eat the food of ancestors from ancient seeds, hear the ancestors’ song when we blow through the hollow bone of a bald eagle. The heirs of such beauty are alive in us.

An old exhale from ancestors is breathed in this moment. There’s joy in the exchange. The tree will be in the world long after I leave. There’s no staying with the yellow blossoms. Making home with the moment is best. Someday the tree, a thousand years from now, will die. I will not hear of its leaving. So, I say now, I’m grateful for having met the tree. I’m grateful for sitting down to see and listen to it. I’m grateful for its peace.