Trees

I have returned to the croft after a month in the arctic in June and then a month as poet in residence at the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden: two huge privileges and amazing to do them back to back. I blogged pretty much every day of July at www.walkingwithpoets.wordpress.com so it has been good to take a breath since I got back, and just be here in the wild wood. Each day there's another marvel to discover, or rediscover. It's that time of year when you get aromatherapy for free all day, every day - the soft sea breeze is dense with honeysuckle and heather blossom fragrances, and trees talk in their native tongue.

I've also returned to Hesse, as I do, from time to time, as to an old friend. Here he is on trees (from Wandering).

'So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish 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. That is happiness.'

Wishing you all childish thoughts, and happiness.