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| Paul Sandby Study of a Tree ca. 1780 watercolor Yale Center for British Art |
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| Raphael Lamar West Pastoral Scene ca. 1785 etching Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| John Robert Cozens Mountainous Landscape with Beech Trees 1792 watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Joseph Mallord William Turner A Great Tree ca. 1796 watercolor Yale Center for British Art |
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| Thomas Hearne Old Tree 1801 lithograph Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| William Alfred Delamotte Figures resting under an Ancient Tree 1802 lithograph Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| John White Abbott View near Canonteign, Devon 1803 watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Heneage Finch, 4th Earl of Aylesford In the Park at Packington before 1812 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Eugène Bléry Branches of an Oak Tree ca. 1837 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Friedrich Preller the Elder Large Oak in the Woods of Ilmenau ca. 1837-38 etching Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Thomas Fearnley Old Birch Tree at Slinde on the Sognefjord, Norway ca. 1839-40 etching Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Alexandre Calame Oak Tree Trunk ca. 1850-60 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Johannes Tavenraat Tree 1861 drawing, with watercolor Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Odilon Redon Tree ca. 1875 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Vincent van Gogh The Mulberry Tree 1889 oil on canvas Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena |
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| Georgia O'Keeffe Dark Tree Trunks 1946 oil on canvas Brooklyn Museum |
Like A Cloud above a Ravine
Like a cloud above a ravine is the hell you already know:
That sublime work of the imagination by Dante Alighieri.
But the rain that falls from that cloud is not made up of human souls.
It rains, and the rain funnels down into the something-other-than-human sewer.
Look how a Chinese writing brush ends in a cone of rigid horsehair.
Loaded with ink, the cone will flex, will leave a wet trench in the rice paper.
It will leave an attractive trench, and the daylight sucked into the ink
Will give it a reflective "shine dot" – like looking into an animals' eye.
Which of you has looked into the looking-up eyes of a hair-trigger fox?
A backyard fox or a campsite coyote: Daoist, unintelligible, brave . . .
Which of you knows how not to part the pebble on the beach from its colors?
The songbird from its social network? the fruit from its multifaceted peel?
Oh, that sugary piece of phosphorus in its form-fitted velvet casing!
That unappreciated Egyptian sarcophagus meant to be opened from the inside.
And each seed-bearing fruit has an atmosphere. Each has its several moons,
Has tides (subject to gravity), changing weather, lunar eclipses . . .
But should an ARROW suddenly snatch the waiting pomegranate out of your hand,
If it snatches the cap off your head, recall: its circuit has only begun . . .
For the arrow of the luckless archer RETURNS to the middle of his or her back.
There, between athletic shoulder blades, is a diploma tube full of arrows.
Is a diploma tube full of arrows, and so it is time for graduation.
The genie's gone back to his bottle; the devils to their fallow hells.
And the CHINESE WRITING BRUSH, and the cloud above the ravine (wherein
The charged particles have sorted themselves along their up-and-down axis),
And the looking-up eyes of the fox, and the sarcophagus, and the campsite
Are irreducible to a system, are each of them floating over a void.
Truly: "All hells and hierarchies are works of the imagination." And equally:
"It is not the part of the Daoist sage to conjure meaningless hells."
– Anthony Madrid (2013)