The Uncarved Blog

We often hear about the benefits of being in nature. I remembered an experience I had with a tree when I went for a winter walk with a friend on the University Endowment Lands in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada during the mid-1990s.

I stopped in front of a particular tree to admire its intricate bark structure up close. I felt a ray of loving attention come from the tree into my heart-mind with these words: “the realness of natural things, the nearness of you.” It was an unexpected intimate experience and I quickly wrote the words down for further exploration. The next morning, I rewrote them as a two-line stanza, and then sequential stanzas naturally unfolded sharing its wisdom. It was as if I had been given a creative seed and it sprouted into a poem.

This gift from the tree was much appreciated. The experience reiterated what Mary Oliver described in her poem, Praying. It was a “doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.” It also reminded me of what Mary Oliver told Krista Tippett in an interview, that attention is the beginning of devotion.

I later titled the poem Being in Nature, implying a double meaning for the word, being, from both sides of the experience. Its sequel, trees, was about the nature of trees, and what we can learn from them.

Being in Nature
a gift from a tree

The Realness of Natural Things
The nearness of you

The Beauty that Nature Brings
When seeing is true

The Silence that Inward Sings
When hearing is clear

The Harmony Between all Beings
It exists right here!

© Ken Chawkin

More poems about trees

See trees—a poem about the nature of trees, a sequel to Being in Nature—a gift from a tree. Both written mid-1990′s during winter in Vancouver, BC. What Do Trees Do? Something to think about was written when I was living in North Vancouver.

CRYSTAL MORNING was written in Fairfield, Iowa in the late 1980s.

Pine Cone Trees was written in Houston, Texas in the mid-1990s.

Willow Tree – a tanka – from a tree’s perspective followed by Friendship – another tree tanka were written in May and August 2010, years after I had returned to Fairfield, Iowa.

See Mary Oliver’s poem, Praying, is a lesson on attention, receptivity, listening and writing.

An early encounter with nature inspired my creativity. It turned into my first published poem, which won an award: ODE TO THE ARTIST, Sketching Lotus Pads at Round Prairie Park.

UPDATE: Reading “Being in Nature” on Let Your Heart Sing

I read ‘Being in Nature: A Gift from a Tree’ on ‘Let Your Heart Sing’ radio show #93: “John Stein’s Interview + Environmental Songs.” The poem completed that show, which first aired during the last week of May 2019.

Sheila Moschen created and hosted a series of 108 shows for KHOE World Radio, 90.5 FM, which air Wednesdays at 1 & 7 PM. The station broadcasts and streams from the campus of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa.

Sheila said 90 of her “Let Your Heart Sing” shows are on YouTube, and 68 of them include photos of the singers. You can hear me read my poem, with visuals, starting at 30:53.

New addition: “The first line is the DNA of the poem.” — Billy Collins

Years later I read about this notion of how a line of poetry can come to you and develop into a poem. Billy Collins explained this to George Plimpton in an interview for The Paris Review’s The Art of Poetry No. 83. He said: “I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. ….. I can tell that the line wants to continue. If it does, I can feel a sense of momentum—the poem finds a reason for continuing. The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. The first few lines keep giving birth to more and more lines.”

I certainly found that to be the case in writing down Being in Nature, especially since I was open and innocently receptive to what was unexpectedly, surprisingly, being given, and which later gave birth to subsequent stanzas, the whole poem. 

Mary Oliver and Billy Collins each approach writing a poem from their own perspective. I found both explanations of their experiences truthful, a confirmation of my own. They are two different, but valid angles on the same subject, of how a poem is written and comes into being.

For more on ‘George Plimpton interviewed Billy Collins for The Paris Review’, see the second half of Billy Collins discusses the value of getting to the end of a poem and what can happen afterwards. Also see this article Billy Collins wrote In Memoriam for The Paris Review about Mary Oliver, recalling a time they gave a poetry reading together: When Mary Oliver Signed Books. (PDF) I also wrote a memorial piece after I discovered she had left us: RIP: Mary Oliver. Thank you for sharing your poetic gifts with us. They are a national treasure!

^{— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.}

Tags: communing with nature, poems about trees, the mystery of being, trees, walking in nature

This entry was posted on October 20, 2010 at 1:20 am and is filed under Mary Oliver, My poems, Other poems, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.