Photography by John Holliger
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The Arboretum My Dad Created

8/30/2013

 
PictureOut of the Cracks, have grown such Beauty
When My Love of Trees Began

The persimmon and witch hazel trees were planted before I was born.  The persimmon tree was rarely known or joyfully eaten in our parts. The Witch hazel twisted back and around itself so much that I gave up following one branch as it bent back upon itself and through the loops of her siblings.

By my early teens I had taken to going along with my Dad as he “took a walk around the yard” after a day’s work.  The story I love to tell from our “walk around the yard,” is about the family of rabbits who didn’t move when we approached them under the white peach tree.  They looked up and some fell over, too dizzy to move. The others took a few steps and collapsed. They were drunk from the old, fallen white peaches.

Years later, after my Dad had died of a broken heart following the death of my twenty-one year old sister, I learned how his “walk around the yard” began. Having already struggled to recover from polio as a young man, there were days when my Dad would wake up, lost in his own interior dark wood. When my mother saw this she handed my Dad something that slowly brought him back to us: the Wayside Gardens catalog. And he would pour over the pages, looking for exotic trees that had a chance to survive in northern Ohio.

Then came the days of anticipation, and reading again about the trees that were on their way to him. And so began his contented “walk around the yard,” touching and gazing with great care and affection each tree, their branches and leaves and fruit. I imagine him becoming one with them, and they with him.

My dad was a photographer of tiny, fragile biologies like mosses and lichens, something that suited a quiet, gentle spirit. He joined a botanical society of university professors who took yearly hikes among the trees. He brought back exceptional photographs of the beauty of the tiny lives that lived under the protection of the trees, that were always filled with light.

Years later when I found myself lost in my own interior dark wood, I too walked among the trees, the only plant species that lived upright like me. I carried my cameras as an outward explanation for walking among my brothers, but no longer with my Dad.

Then one day I saw him, hiking a narrow ridge at the top of the Cataloochee in the Smokey Mountains. “Cataloochee” is a Cherokee word meaning, “those who walk upright.” I could see clearly between each tree at the top of a narrow ridge, and between them, my Dad, a Cataloochee, one who walks upright.

On one of these hikes, when I was lost in my interior darkness, the Loving Mystery who embraces and gently holds all things stopped me in my tracks.  I was given this sense of Presence all around me. The Light of my Cataloochee brothers was vivid and vibrating, as if each were a silently singing tuning fork.  What I heard was the soft singing of leaves.

I can get lost and stuck in trying to change what cannot be changed. But when I “walk around the yard,” the trees call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches. And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”

October 10, 2013 by John Holliger


Grandma's Hairpin Maple

8/17/2013

 
Picture






Grandma’s  Hairpin Maple



Grandma’s hairpin slid into her bun with  ease.
 She might have held up her hairpin
 to this hard-working maple 
  and laughed so hard, she covered her face
with her apron.
 She always wore her apron.
 “You never know…” she says.


She was so tickled she asked, “And whose
bun do you hold in shape?” 
Had Grandma seen the gravel road with Google Earth,
 The road that brought her to this maple, 
  She would have held up her apron again to cover her face.

  The Cataloochee Road has one hairpin turn after another for 
20 miles—maximum speed 10 mph.

 Yes, this is Grandma’s hairpin maple.

 Eight times the earth shifted beneath her.
 Eight times she swung her hips, just so.
 Now with her hips swung with a flirt, 
  She could rise up straight,
 The shortest distance to her Star, 
  Her love, the source of her light and life.
 
And in another generation the earth fell to the side again.
 And again Grandma’s Hairpin Maple swung her
hips with a flirt.
 She did not know that the tectonic plate
beneath her feet used 
To live somewhere in Argentina.

 “Swing those hips!” the square dance caller  hollered.
 
No one of us knows when the soil and stones
will falter beneath our feet.
 Once again Grandma Maple swung her hips.
 Maybe this time she swung ‘em and flirt  ‘em, and laughed.

 How utterly serious we can be about keeping
everything the same.
 
Maybe that apron Grandma always wore
 Is why we love her so dearly, and 
  Wearing her apron ourselves
 Is how we become lovable,
 When our usual habit is to become grumpy
when the ground from Argentina shifts once again beneath our
feet..
Maybe this time we'll swing ‘em and flirt  ‘em, and laugh.


                                                                                  © John Holliger 2013


The Stand of Trees, Safe

8/15/2013

 
PictureA Stand of Trees, Safe






















“The Stand of Trees, Safe”

Entering this stand of trees safe,

Air and breathing,

Spacious for each of the sentient trees.

I rest my hand on each texture,

The barks, the leaves, the lichen.

Pause and move, touch and saunter safe,

Into the un-knownness of this wood safe,

Feeling my way deeper into my own mist, safe.

That first branch of green welcomes me onto the path,

My path, safe,

Beneath the protecting canopy above, safe.

The many hidden mysteries are here, and

I know that when St. Patrick walked 

Through his wood, summoned by the King,

He was surrounded by the forest animals along his way, but to

The king’s men sent to kill Patrick,

The animals appeared as scary, stalwart protectors.

“You don’t mess with these presences!” so off

His killers ran, tossing their weapons as they fled

The field of energy surrounding St. Patrick safe.

So we both are surrounded by presences invisible to us,

But fearfully visible to those who would harm us.

No concealed weapons, Here.  All hastily

Dropped their weapons along the path, a clutter

Of bric-a-brac safe,

Here, to wonder who I am now safe,

Here, to follow the threads generously offered by the hidden presences

Of the forest safe,

Here, safe to stumble safe,

Because Here “stumbling always leads home.”*

                                                                                                       John Holliger

*William Stafford


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