TREE BATHING : THE WORKSHOP

 

TREE BATHING : THE WORKSHOP

         --for Cindy and David, best neighbors driving by

Alongside newly settled

Scholar-Stone,

Settled on fresh-mown grass,

elbows resting on newly settled

Scholar-Stone, pruners in hand,

Suiseki man looking over at his trees,

the neighbor slows as her window lowers.

Jim, You’re a tree bather.

●

This stone,

perfect bench or table

--maybe a stool,

caused so many of its own troubles

for the way it entered the eyes of all who saw it.

Gift from a friend, a potter touched by magic,

arrives in a phone call 14 years ago

when Karen and I wait in checkout line

at Fred Meyers. She names the larger one,

with the letter-pressed by God

heart-shape the size of your two folded hands

that will become the Iwakura stone--

that’s for later, I don’t yet know

Shinto gods and barely have a clue--

being a mere 66—to what Jesus is about

washing people’s feet. I won’t know

miniature landscape stones—suiseki--

until I’m well, well-passed 70.

Pruners

buckled to my belt more than half

a lifetime, no one sees me as a gardener,

why would passers by see this stone

coming from God’s own kiln?

Unsettled language.

How could it be otherwise?

●

Later that day, short-walking

out of the garden—walk

but never leave home--

nine-minute half-mile

around the block meditation

meeting the dog-whisperer

and her partner, asking,

What’s up? And just like Bob

50 years ago singing

that ballad. The thin man,

something happening--

--you don’t know

what it is, do you? I don’t.

I say, I’m tree bathing,

dog whisperer whispers,

Shin-rin-Yoku, light falling

on my feet as steps

take on a Blessingway

adding nothing to bear.

This is the story of how

that stone became a nomad

and how much it had to teach me.

I kept moving it around.

In the beginning I could tip

the red wheelbarrow on its side

and tip it in with two poles.

Later my grandson helped me

do the same, and then, circling

the garden became such work,

it sat invisible trying to hide

an outdoor electric fan.

The two of them couldn’t budge it now.

He paid in big bills this time,

all the while listening for the Navajo Hozho

grandmother’s prayers

Show me something that isn’t beautiful

and I’ll show you the veil over your eyes...

Like the stone knew

from the beginning it was brought here

from Star River

waiting for its caretaker’s birth.

He wasn’t ready. That simple.

●

UNSETTLING THE STONE

Hacking at Korean Lilac roots

with the big ax

trying to take all the light

from the green rock

set by stone garden workers

scholar rock sensei picked out

himself, master’s voice

singing through stone,

Swing again, swing again!

You will never be a gardener.

Jim Bodeen

9 May 2025

●

A garden creates its own government.

In and out of time, trees and stones

will show options in and out of song.

What can be seen sometimes

needs to be listened to first.

A stone can make a tree very large.

A tree can make a stone very small.

You know what the doctor said

about the wheelbarrow.

●

His failures with Bonsai trees remained consistent over time, yet never

diminished his admiration for the world inside the pot and astonished by

the magnificence of the trees. And so he tried again and again, with

a sundry of teachers, artists all, and although he had soft hands essential

for wiring and compassion, and under close supervision, was able

to produce promising starts for his trees, he was not able to sustain

the attention needed and essential for this art. Nevertheless, his efforts

and his failures developed his gardening eye at the same time leading

him to the world of Suiseki stones. He was introduced to miniature

landscape stones through a water workshop he discovered

while attending a bonsai conference. He loved both searching

for stones in water and showing his stones, although his daizas

for holding and displaying were plain, and his woodworking skills

undeveloped, and not suitable for shows. You’ll never show your

stones in California, unless they’re cut, his teacher says. Anyway,

who has diamond blades for this work, he says to himself,

balancing its green serpentine with one of black basalt,

each shaped by the Eel River. He would rub his stones

washing them with water, adding to their patinas. The stone is its

own kind of diamond shaping him, laughing at his monkey mind.

Kawa dojo is the classroom on the river itself. He had had those days.

He experienced them. He had taken them inside himself, his whole

body immersed, running beside him, running through him. The

famous rivers. Searching for stones. Texture, color. Shape.

Large or small. All could be buttes or mountains in his hands.

He saw caves, snow fields and tunnels. Rock walls

sought by rock climbers. All in a stone you hold

in your hand, smaller than a fist.

One morning after pruning the larger Yoshino cherry and lilac

in the south side of his garden, he said to his wife, So

much of what I learned in the beginning pruning roses applies

here. How so? She asked. Pruning the crossed branches, he said.

Much of the rest comes from the bonsai world, or even the craft

of writing his poems. In bonsai, you might take a larger limb

in order to encourage a smaller one. And you’d take new growth

pointing downwards, to the roots. Because the tree is larger

than that of the bonsai, one is able to see branches that block

out light, but that lesson was learned with the small trees

looking intensely with your teacher observing behind you.

That first morning years ago, the sensei spoke to the assembled

students before taking them to the river. Those of you who

are married, or wearing rings, he said, remove them before

we get to the river, so when you’re lifting them from

water, you won’t scratch the stones. The stones. Of course.

They’re belonging. What Stone Sensei said to Bonsai Sensei:

Stones are so much older than the trees.

●

His body is shrinking. He told the nurse that when he went

to the doctor. When he and his wife moved into this house,

more than a decade ago, they had considered this a move

honoring their age. Everything on one floor. No stairs

to climb, no basement with the washing machine. Smaller.

A corner lot. His wife approved of planting mature trees

and they paid gardeners with power equipment to help

them in transporting large stones collected over the years.

Now the trees were larger. They had crossed the threshold

into their eighties. When trees made the stones

appear smaller he had to ask again for help in moving

them, so as to retain their sense of dignity and place. Some

days, raking or maybe composting, he saw it all in new

light again. Everything seemed to be different. Changed

not only in size, but in his daily tending to trees and stones.

The potted plants, his wife’s geraniums. It was as though

everything was here in a bonsai pot. His tiny rake.

His tea cup. It was as though from the first moment he

crossed the boundary into the lawn, with those first plantings

this garden surrounding the house, and even the house

along with he and his wife were living in a bonsai world.

●

This has something to do with tree bathing. It was just

days ago his neighbor had pulled up next to him on

that stone, turning down her window saying, Tree bathing.

He didn’t know what it was. A tree bather. To be

such a one as this. Cleansed by the tree. Water-washed

in branch and limb. She had learned this in her prayer

group, this neighbor. That fit. And then, just as she

was driving off, that this tree bathing came from

the Japanese. If this was out of her range, he also

knew he’d been given another gift on top of the first.

Shinrin-Yoku, Japanese medicine of forest bathing. It didn’t

take long for research to open the library of the forest.

Immersion in trees. Stress disappearing under branches.

He started laughing. Birdsong, walk in the woods.

The more ancient Thoreau. Forest and city park.

His own porch reached into trees. Finches

in the feeder eating thistles, juncos

foraging beneath them. In late May,

Robins arriving waiting for Juneberries to turn.

All that, that and more. His neighbor understood.

He was no longer so strange. She gave him

a thumb’s up as she drove to work. One

with the prayer group as well as science.

●

Harry Lauder Walking Stick—pruning and harvest of two in their maturity. Cart of new creation. Give the two blessingway trees another way to be in their become garden way. May harvesting. The harboring of marginal power. Crucial in being of questionable use. Majesty of another kind of seeking. May Day in June. Memorial Day. Where were you in 1968? Keep walking pilgrims. Power of flower arranging. Sculpture. Art stands with the immigrants. 

He would design a flag with one word: i m a g i n e. He would prune this tree and harvest these twisted crooked sticks.

●

He kept his pruners in his holster on an old belt,

buckling it in the morning after first coffee. He

had learned this decades ago walking with the woman

through her trees at the nursery. His pruners, his trees,

his stones. How he inhabited his days.

He is tree bathing again after the rain.

He’s back from the Berry Patch

with rhubarb. Karen teased him

as he went out the door? Rhubarb?

What? Nobody buys rhubarb, Jim.

Rhubarb is something you grow

in your back yard, something

you get from neighbors. There is hail.

These are the artists underneath

tree canopies. Beneath Autumn Blaze,

beneath Blood Good Maple, and even

Little Cherry Twist, out of the storm,

covered. He remembers Stormfield,

the name Mark Twain gave his mansion.

What are you washing off?

Of what does your cleansing consist?

You and your ointment made of oxygen.

Did you know? Oxygen comes to us first as waste product.

Pick up the cushions. They’re getting soaked.

Hailstones bounce in gutters and children

run outside in marginal understanding

half-terrorized, half-thrilled, up and down the sidewalk.

A finch flies in under the dogwood

looking for cover. Four golden birds

at two feeders feeding.

What is it like bathing in these trees you ask?

Being in this thunder wonder.

What does one do after a tree bath?

The inner cleaning after-now.

Shinrin-Yoku and your dislocated language.

Do not permit the margins to disappear.

How does one preserve white space on the page?

●

Peonies taken from your wife’s mother’s grave

in the heartland decades ago

open on Memorial Day Weekend.

While re-stacking fallen cairns

in Carin’s Park outside the white fence

the dog whisperer and her partner

let you know they’re passing by,

not wanting to frighten your meditation,

that quiet, their Good morning. They

know about tree bathing.

They know,, leaving you to wonder:

How long have they known?

●

Imagine, he thought. Imagine.

The song, of course. Lower case i.

The long white limbs of Jacquemonti Birch

pruned to preserve his neighbor’s sky space,

also lifting and raising tree canopy

in his back yard garden. It takes his breath

away, the rising canopy. His childhood reading

knew their white paper bark once fashioned

canoes. What might he do with such beauty?

Could he fashion poles to arrest

what was pious and false in his own breathing?

Where might that courage be found?

What was taking place in the composting?

●

After I set the round boulder

on top of the nomad stone couldn’t move.

My eyes won’t turn away

Two stones in a cypress forest

I gave myself to you, Karen.

My life is over.

Are you going somewhere?

Karen asks

coming from the bathroom.

What are you doing?

●

Give Trees a Chance

In Seattle Growth Plan Vote

Headline in Seattle paper.

[Daddy, what’s a headline?]

Setbacks will shrink. Precise

language in urban building codes.

The setback refers to required space

between edge of a building and property line.

Setbacks—it’s so hard to contain language--

will shrink from 20 feet in front and 25 feet in back

to ten feet in both front and back

with zero distance if there’s an alley.

Big trees will come down, replaced

with what can fit in cramped space.

More concrete, less green.

Tree canopy costs. Birds.

Birds and us. Birds are us.

Little houses on the hillside.

Old song in a bonsai pot.

Seattle’s goal for tree canopy

is 30 percent. [Daddy,

what’s a tree canopy?]

Read the editorial for yourself

in the Seattle Times, 20 May 2025:

Check for accuracy. They won’t

make it, they won’t make it.

●

Balanced on the ladder,

Karen spots him against her will,

he takes one more step, lifting

the extended 10-foot pole saw

into the Jacquemonti Birch.

If he could take this one, reaching

straight and firm, he could get

the second one, too. The two poles.

white-papered beauties, fluttering

in his imagination, he might attach

his oddly-shaped flag above

the fence line into blue sky.

His sky was blue like his flag.

One word in white, letterspaced

in lower case, like it was

on the album cover.

Jim Bodeen

May Day—Memorial Day, 2025