A Poem: Imagining

I see the trees,
I close my eyes and know somehow
the trees remain.

That at the opening of my lids
they will not have moved.

Cannot,

and only I,
in the opening and closing of my eyes,
lose sight of them.

I see the trees,
I close my eyes as darkness falls
and know the trees stand still.

That in the opening of my lids
they won’t have moved.

Though all I see now
is my own reflection in the window,
the trees in the morning re-emerge

as something out of the imagination
taken shape.

And I think of the Divine,
how in the night I know the trees
by the sound of the wind in the branches.

That it is not a stretch to think
that God is a memory in the mind
placed there before we were born?

And we sit here imagining now
what we can’t remember seeing.

Just like our eyes in the natural world,
curtailed by the limits of our vision,
know there is more existing.

Like these trees,
which upon seeing now,
I close my eyes,

dream.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
February 2022

At That Hour

At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?

When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?

Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.

~ James Joyce