Under the Wisdom Tree

 

Who speaks for nature

Her voice shining through

With sonnets of wisdom

In words we once knew

 

Our season of changes

We strive to renew

Sacred her lessons

Of who teaches who

 

 

Silent Dawn

 

Dawn paints her silent muse

From dreams in the night

Awaken on the path we choose

Beneath the morning light

 

Here in the Woods

 

Here in the woods

Where the wisest things grow

From the roots of mother earth

To the seeds that we sow

 

But how far into the forgotten

Have we gone so long ago?

As twilight casts her shadows

On the wayward ones below

 

While mother earth whispers wisdom

For all who need to know

That it’s here in the woods

Where the wisest things grow

 

Whisper Creek

 

Along the shores of whisper creek

Of waters ancient wistful deep

Beneath the trees as nature sleeps

Lives the silence that softly speaks

 

Through the Trees

 

In a world driven faster by minds made too small

No rest for the weary, the dreary banal

 

Must the earth tremble, resigned to her fate

While we wander in circles no time for debate

 

But love lives in nature, our true clarion call

Through the trees lives a light that shines above all

 

The Faraway Woods

 

Her soul it withers where the rivers don’t flow

Where songbirds cease their wistful chime

What’s not been sown will never grow

In faraway woods of distant rhyme

 

Yet silence bears witness to waters so deep

Like moonbeams shining into the night

As mother nature arises from misty sleep

Into the dawn of wisdom’s light

 

On Creativity

 

“Why are you bothering to learn guitar?  It’s such a silly waste of time.  I mean, you’ll never get any good at it.”

What a statement.  It was all he could do to contain the disappointment.  It’s surprising, he thought, what people you call friend can sometimes say.

A few minutes into practice, he put the guitar down in frustration thinking about the question ‘why bother’.  Why bother doing anything creative?

“Let me ask you a question.  Do you remember what Aristotle said about language?”

“Vaguely.”

“He said language is sound with meaning.  What do you make of that?”

“That makes sense.”

“It seems about right to me too, until you really think it through.  Now ask yourself, which came first, the sound or the meaning?”

“Well, I guess you’d have to first create the meaning before you create the meaningful sound.”

“I think you’re right.  It’s what goes on inside the mind first that’s the prime mover behind our creative efforts.  So it may turn out that Aristotle, in a sense, had it backwards.  Language is most likely meaning with occasional sound.”

“What’s you’re point?”

“I’m answering you’re question.  Our language or ‘higher’ intelligence, however you want to describe it, gravitates towards the imaginative.  Poets, philosophers, photographers, particle physicists, Lascaux cave painters and yes, learning guitarists all do what our brains intuitively do:  liberate our most inspired thoughts.  And if you’re willing to be serious, the world needs more poets and physicists, the more the better. People should be free to create in whatever way suits their talents because it’s the essential and inextricable part of being human.”

His friend sat there deliberating, quietly. It was a risky quiet.  He knew from experience that friendships, like wayward vessels, sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly run aground.

But then the jury of one calmly stood up, walked to the kitchen and grabbed two beers.  On his way back, he picked up the guitar.

“Will you teach me how to play this thing, please?”