Living Tree Poetry

Stay tender
hurt can be a friend,
softening the heart.

And the soft heart,
has eyes and ears

to see and hear.
Sensitive to life.

And the tears that easily shed
are like rain,

that the fertile ground
melts to receive.

Stay true
there is much to mar our dreams
of how life should be.

But the true heart
beats ever on

and learns that life in seasons
is for sowing,

for reaping,
and for storing our seed.

What does not strike today
may not yet have reached its time.

And the heart,
we learn the heart is like flesh
responding to touch.

We know what matters,
by how much it echoes through us.

By how we shake
and shiver, and erupt

in response to the things that move,
and stir our passions.

So that we make dreams come to life,
by first envisaging them.

Stay soft,
pliable
ready to adapt.

Like water, that ever springs
and then cuts its course to lowest ground.

Making a track
where it feels a give.

Yes, everything is sensitive
to everything else.

And everything returns,
like water, like life.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
February 2019

‘Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance’
Carl Sandburg