Branch and book

There is more truth and beauty

from a single branch

from a single tree

in my garden

than from any book

from my library.

For the books

in my library

are the byproducts,

the dried, withered corpses

of the murdered brothers

of my trees.

The only thing immortal

on the book page

is the idea,

which exists outside

the book, in

the land of eternity.

The idea and the tree branch.

The former is eternal

intellectual beauty

while the latter

is the eternal

beauty of existence.

R. R. Shea