TREES CLOSE UP

Quotations from When The Trees Say Nothing by Thomas Merton: “We do not realize that the fields and the trees have fought and still fight for their respective places on this map–which, by natural light, belongs entirely to the trees.”

 “..a slow dance in the wind…like a Japanese dancer–she turns up her delicate branches in the wind and the undersides of the leaves smile at the sun.”

“Who can see such trees and bear to be away from them? I must go back. It is not right that I should die under lesser trees.” 

“The great leaves and the innumerable shades and patterns where they overlap”

“How slender are the bodies of the young black oaks . With a stroke of the brush you could make them beautiful, on paper, but that would never be what  they are.”