THE HEALING POWERS

OF TREES

Poem for Today - October 13, 2014

THE SYCAMORE

In the place that is my own place, whose earth

I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,

a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.

Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,

hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.

There is no year it has flourished in

that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it

that is its death, though its living brims whitely

at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.

Over all its scars has come the seamless white

of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history

healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection

in the warp and bending of its long growth.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.

It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.

It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.

In all the country there is no other like it.

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling

the same as itself, and greater, than I would be ruled by.

I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,

And is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

© Wendell Berry

Page 284-285

in Upholding Mystery,

An Anthology of 

Contemporary Christian

Poetry, edited by

David Impastato,

New York, Oxford,

Oxford University Press,

1997