El Aliso (the Alder)

El Aliso

Bark beneath my hand’s caress,
Indifferent to my skin’s warmth,
Resistant in its grey solidity,
Daring me to feel important as I
Stand beside a tree, half its being

Quietly active beneath the soil,
Under my rootless toes.
I extend my heart in mind and fingers
Eager for soul’s contact with
That woody soul, this alder, this
Living other confronting me, watching over me,
Yes, another self.

Fronting the world, the sun, that I might
Live in your shelter—what would
You tell me, a two-legged deaf man?
Interwoven in our Mother is a
Network of roots
Going down and reaching out, not

Green things only but my roots also,
Owned by me when I spoke of them to my realtor.

Fixed? Nothing is fixed, yet Earth has
Linked me with this place in the
Yearning that said, “Yes!” when I came here.
Intricate the web of which I am a part,
Nor can I extricate myself from tree or bird,
Glancing light or piercing cry, kitten or cathedral.

These are all within me and I in them.
How can we find Jesus’ words startling if we
Realize that he is in us and we in him
Or all things in God, for that is the
Underlying way of reality?
Growing in us, flourishing, dying, all things.
How can I find anything alien to myself?

Unyielding tree trunk, you are the
Stuff of my soul, we share stardust and Spirit both.


November 28, 2002
(c) 2002 the BB

Humanum sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
I am human: I consider nothing human as alien to myself.

Terence, cited by Cicero, then by Rabelais,
and later picked up in Tennessee Williams’ “Night of the Iguana”

One space spreads through all creatures equally—
inner-world-space. Birds quietly flying go
flying through us. Oh, I that want to grow
the tree I look outside at grows in me!

It stands in me that house I looked for still,
in me that shelter I have not possessed.
I, the now well-behaved: on my breast
this fair world’s image clings and weeps here fill.

Last two stanzas of “Everything beckons to us” Rainer Maria Rilke translated by J. B. Leishman

Post Scriptum:
Nothing is fixed indeed. I loved the alders in front of the condo I bought in 2002. So much so that I named my new home Los Alisos (the Alders). I spoke to the trees when I passed them, I reached out and touched the nearest one when I passed it I prayed with them. But early the next year they were all cut down with no warning. Here is where one stood.



--the BB