Growing Tree-Ears
By the Flamingo Willow
A breeze, blue sky, no snow on the dry ground, the window of time for me to listen comfortably outdoors is still open. I am grateful. It is this flamingo willow that called me, on the soft border of my property. My back to the gnarled trunk, I listen, my heart opening to this sweet old tree.
Come inside me…
I do, and feel a sensation of slow, deep weeping, not human grief, but other. I struggle, not sure where to go, what to listen for. The breeze lifts the next page in my journal as I hear a steady stream of traffic. I try to sort out the tree’s personality from its deeper message. This shift helps. I hear resonance with my last land-listening time with the butternut tree a few days ago and remember I was speechless then, while endeavouring to learn tree language. Am I here again, at this threshold?
Yes. Yeeessss… The answer comes, a long whisper. Not like any familiar voice. I can trust this.
Tree Ears – We hear everything. Our listening absorbs the noise. We are so taken for granted.
I know this, and doubt whether my listening is accurate.
Go deeper into how we hear…
I’m in the roots, feeling the hesitancy of the fine fingerling root-tips, their reluctance to reach out further.
In the trunk, my breathing shortens. I can’t take a full deep breath. What is this? The awareness comes. I don’t want to hear, to take in what is going on… I’m living on the shortest breath, just enough to survive.
Moving into the leafy branches, I hear the tree — My song! This I fling out with abandon. A gift, for just a season. A short song in the grand scheme. A declaration of my presence and later, my gift to the land.
Hear crow? His voice, his song I welcome, even calling him to me to visit. We are friends, kin. I sing to him when he is near. He knows my song. He carries me with him which is how I travel. Feel this, as you rest in me. It is foolish shortsightedness to think I am rooted, unable to travel. Do you not think I sing and pray too? It is the noise, the spoken and the unspoken sounds, that drown out my voice.
If you learned (which you could in time) how your singing prayers could be picked up by the ribbons of this other web – the creatures singing with the trees and plants (stones are a steady ostinato) you could endlessly refine your ability to send praises within the world. This web is more real — resilient, alive, democratic and fundamental than anything you might devise. Self-repairing, far more rapid, cellularly encoded and innately healing. Trees can teach this technology, should you choose to listen.
My neighbour has stepped outside and is talking on her deck. I am swathed in sunlight. It feels as though the world has turned inside out; what was thin and almost imperceptible now feels more real than the traffic. My tree-ears reach to squirrel, to crow, to sparrow and I smile. I feel you! The traffic? Not so much!
