Thomas Merton -

Yesterday I sat outside with a book in my lap, intending to read, but mainly watching the pine trees sway and listening to where they rub.

This, from Thomas Merton, feels particularly appropriate.


My zen is in the slow swinging tops of sixteen pine trees.

One long thin pole of a tree fifty feet high swings in a wider arc than all the others and swings even when they are still.

Hundreds of little elms springing up out of the dry ground under the pines.

My watch among oak leaves. My T-shirt on the barbed wire fence and the wind sings in the bare wood.


Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. Lawrence S. Cunningham, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996: 232.