Dear Reader,

I'm inviting writers to help save the UC stadium oaks, which the UC administration wants to replace with an exercise center for the UC football team. If you google for “Berkeley stadium oaks” you will find abundant information, including pictures, on both “Google Web” and “Google News.”

 

If you are interested, there are ways you could participate even without attending. The simplest would be that you send a brief letter of support (with or without a brief poem). Then your letter (and possible poem) could be printed out and (like my own poem below) be posted like mine, pastoral-style, on a tree-trunk. Jane Hirshfield and Fred Marchant, although out-of-town and not planning to attend, have already sent brief statements and poems for posting, which I have attached.


I have myself written the following poem:

 

 

    CALL TO CHANCELLOR BIRGENEAU

 

I think that I shall never see

A touchdown lovely as a tree.                                     Kilmer

It’s great to watch kids play a game;

Big Money makes it not the same.

And where Big Money is the rule

A school forgets it is a school;

Till Time, <I>indifferent in a week

To a beautiful physique</I>,                                              Auden

Will judge the schools that went to Hell

As farm teams for the NFL,

Annihilating what we made

Of <I>a green thought in a green shade</I>.                         Marvell

The health of a society is tested

When gentle people get arrested.

Good God! I never thought to see

Poets arrested in a tree.

But, folks, if you don’t heed this call

You may not see this tree at all.                                 Nash

 
I invite anyone to write a brief statement, followed by a poem or equivalent, the whole to fit on one page suitable for posting on a UC stadium oak.

Sincerely,

Peter Dale Scott


Jane Hirshfield:



Please add my voice to those attempting to speak for the trees. While I can't be there in person, perhaps you could post (gently) this poem, about a redwood next to my own house, on the redwood tree which I understand is among that grove of superb beings? It's point is exactly this protest's point: to recognize that our human "needs" weigh less than these trees' existence. The tree of the poem will be here, I trust, long after my own house is not. I must hope the Berkeley stadium grove will be as well. Shouldn't a great university model in its decisions what has become increasingly clear: that the whole community of life is part of a single, all-too-fragile web.     

Thank you so much for organizing this,

Jane Hirshfield



     Tree

  



It is foolish

to let a young redwood

grow next to a house.

 

Even in this 

one lifetime,

you will have to choose.

 

That great calm being,

this clutter of soup pots and books—

 

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. 

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

 

                               Jane Hirshfield





Fred Marchant:

 

I thank you for the letter, and the invitation to lend my support in opposing the cutting down of the Berkeley oaks. I do know that oak grove, and walked in/near it just last fall. The plan to cut them down is appalling. 

 

And let me offer a poem for you to use. Post it on a tree?  It is about a cousin-tree, the bristlecone pine, but the spirit of the issue is in the  poem's opening and closing lines. 

 

Bristlecone

 

Sometimes a tree will be there

when you need it most, when 

you realize that you've been

breathing too long in the high,

 

thinned out air. Maybe you've

staggered, tripped on a rock

you warned yourself about,

but tripped on anyway. Marmots

 

may be signaling your coming,

and you could answer with your 

own set of clicks and whistles,

but all this would only deepen

 

the dizziness, the spin of nausea,

the dread combining with delight

at reaching the rim of the canyon.

Below, the rock shapes waver,

 

and you are not the first to think

they look like the dead. You want 

to run after them, to tug and plead.

The feeling as it rises has its own

 

strong winds. You know that

lightning and rain will be coming.

You stand in one of the eroded 

places seeking out that tree.

 

 

--Fred Marchant, in Tipping Point 

 

 


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[1][1] http://cbs5.com/local/local_story_353144033.html: “The University of California, Berkeley agreed Thursday [December 21]  to delay any preliminary work toward a remodel of the university's Memorial Stadium and the construction of a new $125 million training facility that would be built adjacent to the stadium. The university, which is facing three lawsuits aimed at stopping the projects, will have to wait until a Jan. 11 court hearing before beginning any work toward construction of the new facilities, according to a statement released Thursday from the groups filing suit against the university.” 

 
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