Trees Need Not Walk The Earth

This is a segment from a poem written in 1920 by my father David Ross. For most of my life I only knew the first four lines, and finally found the entire poem on good old Google.

Over the years I have created many tree themed tapestries, and so, inspired by my Dad’s poem, I combined some tree elements with his words.

Here is the entire poem:

Trees need not walk the earth
For beauty or for bread;
Beauty will come to them
Where they stand.
Here among the children of the sap
Is no pride of ancestry:
A birch may wear no less the morning
Than an oak.
Here are no heirlooms
Save those of loveliness,
In which each tree
Is kingly in its heritage of grace.
Here is but beauty’s wisdom
In which all trees are wise.

Trees need not walk the earth
For beauty or for bread;
Beauty will come to them
where they stand
In the rainbow—
The sunlight—
And the lilac-haunted rain;
And bread will come to them
As beauty came:
In the rainbow—
In the sunlight—
In the rain.


Trees Need Not Walk The Earth, will be released as an open edition print, 13” x 19”.

© Helen Webber, 2010

AN E-BOOKLET FOR MOTHERS DAY

GOSSAMER WINGS


Could I leave this mess of dishes
and crumpled clothes?
Could I resist wiping spills and a runny nose?

Could I unworry myself
From preparing the proper food,

Could I, the mother of this wild and restless brood
change my earthbound creeping caterpillar self
and take my childhood dreams off the shelf,


and shed the cocoon and fly far away
over golden hills and silvery streams
melting my children’s magic into my dreams---
with these gossamer wings, who’s to say

where this flight of our imagination
will take us some day?


from THE FOUR SEASONS OF MOTHERHOOD
an 8 page e-boolet celebrating the four stages
of motherhood from infant to adult. Available to send
as an on linebooklet to elebrate mothers.


© Helen Webber, 2010

THE FOUR SEASONS OF MOTHERHOOD

© Helen Webber 2010

Here’s a sample from an e-booklet just introduced

showing the stages of motherhood relating to

a baby, a child, a teen, and adult.

The four sesons of Motherhood is a celebration of the

invincible ties between mother and child

at any age, and any stage
It’s an 8 page on line booklet that you can e-mail to all the mothers

you know, and even the mothers of mothers. No sealing envelopes,

licking stamps, or rushes to the post office.

You can send it to anyone who cares about the bonding of mother

and child as well as the bonding of poetry and art.

Celebrating EARTHDAY with a tapestry

The Tapestry Around us

Be it a golden moon
shining on a velvet river

Or a forest of animals
sheltered by brocaded trees

Or birds streaming through
a silken sky

Be it mountains of woven wool
and hillsides covered with
tall grasses of tweed

It is all a tapestry,
a reminder
of the song the Earth
is singing to us

© Helen Webber
Poppies, fabric collage tapestry
from the Earthsong Collection
also available as fine art print

Be sure to check out my Earthday Flickr gallery.

SWEET & SOUR WORD SOUP

So what’s in a word? Well. lots. The word social and all its manifestations including words and phrases such as socialism, socialize, social network, socializing content, going social…make a tasty sweet and sour soup.

The stigmatized political “socialized “ word, shouted about to repress socially progressive programs, and to defeat those who advocate for such programs, well that’s the sour part. That fear word started in the 30’s and still is being used to frighten the public into a knee jerk reaction against positive social change.

The sweet part of the word soup is coming from those who were children when the cold war ended. Somehow they aren’t frightened by the word “socialized”. These social dare- devils have used these words to beckon us into a sweetened life using social networks to enhance everything including our businesses, and every aspect of our social lives.

Such is the sweet and sour word soup of today… a mixture of words that sound alike but with very different flavors.

Bloggers Lament

Some of you who swim in the sea of social networking
may occasionally sink into a swamp of despond.

Here’s my homage to your despair.

Even if you are an Olympic swimmer
you may recognize, out of the corner of your eye,
a rogue wave of frustration that occasionally comes
your way.

This is for you, too.
(click on image to enlarge)