my poplars

my favourite stand of giant, very old poplar trees - I love them, I love the way their leaves rustle in the wind 

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. 

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death. 

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. 

Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is & that is home. Hermann Hesse