Photo Pensee: A Tree Grows in Provo

I read this Sunday morning in the Book of Mormon: "And it came to pass that I beheld a tree . . . " Then I read this by Tagore Rabindranath: "Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven." So I paused in my reading to go see and be mindful of the tree in front of my apartment building. Just as the sun crested the mountains to pick out its highlights and marble it with shade.

I picture pine cones as wizened and discarded old men, thrown away by an evergreen like candy wrappers -- but my tree now shows me how they cluster and grow green.

The determined trunk is covered with bark like reptilian scales

The bare ground underneath the tree writhes with roots

Religion teaches us to revere trees as part of God's landscape -- Science tells us that trees hold mortal strife with one another for space and light, such as my tree and its nemesis across the sidewalk that showers down a constant green rain of delicate seeds.

I look up to trees to realize how grand and yet inconsequential my life becomes