Ezra Pound: "The Tree"

                I stood still and was a tree amid the wood
Knowing the truth of things unseen before,
Of Daphne and the laurel bough
And that god-feasting couple olde
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder-thing.
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many new things understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

"The Tree" by Ezra Pound, from Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound. Edited by Michael King. © New Directions Publishing, 1982.  

Image credit: Today's artwork is a special gift, offered by A Year of Being Here subscriber and Patra Passage creator Lynda Lowe. She writes, "This painting is titled `Poïesis,' a Greek word layered with meaning and the root origin of the word poetry. Martin Heidegger used it to mean ‘a bringing forth,’ a threshold occasion when something transforms from one thing to become another. This image came to me during an important meditation during a very transitional time—a time of poïesis. A tree dissolved into light, edges expanded; everything seemed multivalent and newly understood. Ezra Pound’s poem `The Tree' speaks to this threshold moment."

Poïesis is 40" x 36" mixed media on panel. Just beautiful! Thank you, Lynda.