by Jane St. Clair

In my next life I want to be a tree.

Buddha sat under a bodhi tree in order to achieve enlightenment. He sat under that tree for a week, but maybe the tree was already enlightened. Trees do look as if they pray all day, don’t they?

If I get to be a tree, I’d wear flowers in my hair during springtime. Maybe pink ones ..

or yellow flowers like the palo verde trees in Arizona, but either way I’d be magnificent.

In summer I’d be right there in the lushness and sensuality of the season, full of leaves with my arms spreading out in joy —

even as my cup runneth over with harvest.

In the fall, I’d be indecisive about losing my leaves and I’d be half-green and half-gold for a while …

…until I’d find myself wild in colors!
…Red! Yellow! Orange!
…Until my whole mountainside looks like a big bowl of Trix!

Yet in winter I’d have a certain beauty too — with black and white spidery webby sparkles of frost on my branches lending a certain mystic quality to my aspect.

Without greenery you see my beautiful patterns more easily ..

And you see my strange umbrella shapes when you simply look up ..

And when you look down, you see the strong vertical shapes that look like elephant legs…

If I lived in a forest with other trees, I would be dark and mysterious sometimes, sometimes leading you humans into my pathways.

So in my next life I want to be a tree. A tree that is just there –a tree that is happy all day long – not wanting or striving or doing, just being, and yet constantly changing, alive and wonderful.

The poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “Let be be the finale of seem.” He was writing about ice cream, but he might just as well have been writing about trees.

Thank you, Trees, for your contributions to the holiday season! Merry Christmas!