The Axe Forgets The Tree Remembers. …African Proverb
The surging pain of the strike The slashing that seethes the soul. The emotions deepen the wound Such is the exacting nature of the hurt.
But learn you must To gradually evolve To let go the past To grow anew Arise from the scars Forget you may not But forgive you can!
Like the barks of the tree Although scathed and bruised By the cuts of the axe Growing out new branches And blossoming into spring Flowering in fortitude… Strengthening the Soul Renewing the spirit
For the Bark of a Tree … Tells the tale of sheer grit And strength in the grounding.
Your life’s scars are patterns Life has drawn on you While you held ground.
Replenish &Regenerate. Only to bloom again in time!
When I shared this beautiful picture of the Jacaranda Trees on the social media yesterday this post got a lot of responses… and continues to pour in still. Perhaps it touches the chord of connectedness somewhere amidst the roots.
Am highlighting a few learnings along the way for me through this post.
My friend John Rylance mentioned about how much the beautiful work ‘ Endymion’ the poem with the opening line ….
‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’ by John Keats applies to this picture . In his words ..
So much of this poem reflects your Jacaranda tree picture, it could so easily be an illustration to accompany the work.@John Rylance
Sharing a few curated verses from the poem Endymion-
A thing-beauty-joy-ever…
Paths there were many,
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly To a wide lawn,
whence one could only see Stems thronging all around between
the swell Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,
Edg’d round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.
Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. It begins with the line “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”. Endymion is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. WikipediaOriginally published:1818
I also came across the video clip about these trees there..
In response my friends Claire Cardwell and Gert Scholtz mentioned about Pretoria and Johanesburg in South Africa having huge number of these trees still.. inspite of the opposition to these so called alien invasions …
@Savvy Raj there was a very vocal minority a few years back that wanted to chop down all the Jacaranda trees as they are not indigenous to South Africa. Fortunately the majority over-ruled them! You can’t however now buy a Jacaranda sapling at the nursery to plant in your garden. I do love them, I think the best places to see them in Joburg are in Linden, Northcliff Hill and in an office block in Rosebank – looking down all you can see is purple. Thanks for the post! Claire Cardwell
@Savvy Raj Jacaranda’s are truly beautiful. They bloom this time of year and our street plus many surrounding areas are covered with bright blue-purple flowers. Pretoria is known as the Jacaranda city, but Johannesburg where I live, actually has more of these trees lining the streets. Very nice post Savvy – thanks for the video too.
And then as I happened to share this photograph with my family and here is what my mother comes up with…
“The twisted branches signify the conflicts in our wavering minds and the clarity of the sky of the blue in the background with the bewitching pink flowers assures us of the positive solutions at the end .” Anjana
