How to Breathe With the Trees By Margaret Renkl April 1, 2024

New York Times

Nature has a way of teaching us valuable lessons if we pause to listen. The ancient wisdom carried by trees can guide us towards a deeper understanding of life. Imagine standing amidst a lush forest, surrounded by towering trees that have weathered countless storms and seasons. As you inhale the earthy scent of the woods, try to synchronize your breath with the gentle rustling of leaves above. It’s a meditative practice, allowing your lungs to expand and contract in harmony with the natural world.

The interconnectedness of all living beings becomes clearer as you focus on your breath. With each inhalation, visualize yourself drawing in the pure, oxygen-rich air that the trees generously provide. As you exhale, release any tension or negativity, returning your own gifts to the ecosystem. Through this exchange, you become an integral part of the forest, linked in rhythm and purpose.

Exploring this symbiotic relationship with the trees can inspire a profound sense of tranquility. In an ever-changing modern world, the steadfast presence of these gentle giants offers comfort and stability. As you continue to practice this mindful breathing, remember that you are not separate from nature – you are an essential thread in its intricate tapestry. Embrace the serene wisdom of the trees and let it nourish your soul.

In the United States, about half of poets laureate spend their terms developing a signature project that fosters a greater appreciation of poetry. Ms. Limón has two: “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World,” an anthology of nature poetry that will be released on Tuesday; and “You Are Here: Poetry in the Parks,” a series of poetry-centered picnic-table-style installations in seven national parks. Each will be inscribed with the words of a poet associated with that landscape and also with a writing prompt designed to nudge readers to try their own hands at making a poem. These initiatives will be formally introduced on Thursday at the Library of Congress in conjunction with the library’s inaugural Mary Oliver Memorial Event.

Whether sweeping and magnificent or nearly microscopic — a majestic national park vista, say, or an ant colony’s communal effort to save its own inadvertently uncovered eggs — the natural world has always been a catalyst for lyricism. “There’s a reason why people go to these incredible natural landscapes and think, ‘I have no words,’” Ms. Limón said. “And yet the poets, we love to see if we can figure out some words: ‘Let’s see if we can name that kind of wonder, that kind of awe.’”

The connection between the beauty of the world and the beauty of the language is more crucial now than it has ever been. In its intimacy, its revelation not just of nature but also of the perceiving self, nature poems offer one of the few paths we have to consider the risks to the natural world in a way that is free of partisan rancor.

Those risks are foremost in Ms. Limón’s mind. In considering what her signature project as poet laureate would be, the thought that came to her was both small and impossibly huge: “I just want us all to write poems and save the planet,” she writes in the introduction to “You Are Here.”

“We all have nature poems within us — every single one of us,” Ms. Limón said when I asked her about this statement. “I wanted to have a book that not only allowed us to think of many different ways that nature poems can exist and move in the world, but also give people permission to write their own nature poems and think about it in a different way.”

“You Are Here” is an anthology of nature poems by 50 of the most accomplished poets working today, including the PEN/Voelcker Award winner Rigoberto González, the former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, the Pulitzer Prize winner Diane Seuss and the Kingsley Tufts Award winner Patricia Smith, among many others who have won national awards for their work. “I just asked for these original poems, like, ‘Will you make this poem that speaks back to the natural world, whatever that means to you?’” Ms. Limón said.

The poems she got in response represent a great diversity of poetic voices and forms, and also a diversity of natural landscapes. If your idea of nature poetry is, as Ms. Limón said only half-jokingly, “a young gentleman walking to a mountain and having an epiphany,” this anthology will put that notion to rest.

Whoever you are, you will find yourself and your own world in the expansiveness of this collection. Even in the specificity of each poet’s own inimitable experience, you will find your own voice and your own perceiving self, for the natural world includes us and enfolds us all. Nature can be found on a mountain, yes, but it can also be found on a city stoop. Or in a drainage ditch. Or in the sky above a prison yard. Wherever we are, that is where the natural world is, too. It is there. We just have to notice it.

Writing a poem might seem like the least practical way imaginable to address melting glaciers, bleaching coral, drought, pollution and the like, never mind the overarching catastrophes of climate change and mass extinction. What can language do to save us now? What can something so small as a poem possibly do to save us now?

The answer lies in poetry’s great intimacy, its invitation to breathe together. We read a poem, and we take a breath each time the poet takes a breath. We read a nature poem, and we take a breath with the trees. When the trees — and the birds and the clouds and the ants and even the bats and the rat snakes — become a part of us, too, maybe that’s when we will finally begin to care enough to save them.

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   Song to Dance

My breath – a reed to lead to a deeper me

I concede nothing and continue to proceed

The silence in between is so clean to

Dance along from note to note

Conceding little – forging into the magnitude