In this last personification that Maya employs, people hear the “speaking of the tree.” What people? Twenty different groups who experienced prejudice, bigotry, racism, and other forms of ostracism and oppression. I don’t have the time to do those justice. The variety is enough to show the scope of oppression around this globe, the mindless, needless, Ego-fueled fears, jealousies, misunderstandings, and disrespect.

Once again, the transition into the voice of the tree is seamless. Why? It indicates the voices of Nature, the testimony of Spirit and Heart-energy surround us, speak to us, and reinforce the messages of blessing, wisdom, kindness, compassion, and love — a clear contrast to the primary energies most of humanity too often lives.

The tree invites all to “Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.” Before the tree gives the reason, however, a significant and long parenthesis is added: “Each of you, descendant of some passed on / Traveller, has been paid for.” The implication here takes the form of a debt that required settlement, a debt incurred by Ego, which we allowed to lift us in defiance of the laws of Nature, laws that illustrate how we can relate to the Universe. Nature gives examples of Spirit in all things, the same Spirit that is Heart in each of us. It can guide us into the higher frequencies of life, those that tend to peace, love, creativity, innovation, purpose, happiness.

The tree continues as she calls on Indigenous People who named all the trees but were driven from their lands by Ego-controllers, by the same sort who claim that the almighty quest for wealth and power trumps everything: “You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, / You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, / Then forced on bloody feet…” Yet all of us have been paid for. We have Heart within by which we can now operate.

Who abused the Indigenous People, and why did they do it? Again, a number of ethnicities are listed, but the why is the most significant fact. The tribes forced to leave opened the way for those “Desperate for gain, starving for gold.” Ego doesn’t hesitate to destroy, abuse, or even kill for those things that have nothing to do with the deepest yearnings of us all, those qualities that we ultimately desire. Sometimes, egotists maintain they do what they do for peace, love, and the common good. Their avarice, ours, produces a debt, so the tree says these named groups arrived “on a nightmare / Praying for a dream.” The ends never justify the means.

At times, things that seem positive, like seeking wealth and being highly motivated to pray for some dream, can become a nightmare if the motive force is Ego. Exploring, discovering, and knowing who we are as Heart will shape the dreams and prevent nightmares.
Once again the tree offers the invitation: “root yourselves beside me. / I am the tree planted by the river, / Which will not be moved.” Heart-energies, highest frequencies don’t change, don’t give out when times are tough. Nature reflects that.

Then, the three elements of Nature here harmonize in their testimony to those seeking to know Self: “I, the rock, I the river, I the tree / I am yours…” Ego will sow discord, and sometimes we need discord to shake things up. However, when we recognize it and need to discover Self, we will not find false witness in Nature.

In fact, they say, once again, “your passages have been paid.” Passages, journeys from our history painted mostly by Ego, in both personal and corporate operation, have cost us. Heart in us waits to be discovered, invited, and engaged to be our operating system, one that will set beauty, love, light, peace, creativity, and progress on a solid footing, nurtured and flowing with the right energy. Heart in us is the payment.

We need not be bogged down: “Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need / For this bright morning dawning…” Discovering Self and creating Purpose to pursue those things yielding happiness, fullness, significance give us hope.This hope isn’t vague.

It’s personal — “for you.” Heart allows us to explore our own past and view and evaluate it in truth: “History, despite its wrenching pain, / Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, / Need not be lived again.” Don’t deny. Accept. Release it. Allow Heart to lead onward and upward.

When that discovery has been made, we can dream again, good dreams, dreams that become purpose and vision and health, dreams that become personal yet benefits, blesses, and works together for all. Maya, I think you agree with that, don’t you?

Yes! “Give birth again to the dream. / Women, children, men, / Take it into the palms of your hands. / Mold it into the shape of your most / Private need. Sculpt it into / The image of your most public self.” All have Heart-essence. All may have a dream. None need ascribe to anyone else’s dream or their so-called truth. Being true to Self and living it will work together for a new history, a new way of writing history, a new definition of history. Discovering Self is not selfish; it benefits all.

The past pall of Ego over our history dissipates in the light of Heart: “Do not be wedded forever / To fear, yoked eternally / To brutishness.” The propensity to accept war and destruction as natural is a lie. It does NOT have to be that way, and scheming, duplicitous political and governmental dealings for personal gain, even national, at the cost of others’ freedoms is brutishness — against Nature.

How do we break free from those things which seem inevitable in an Ego-mindset? “The horizon leans forward, / Offering you space to place new steps of change.” Change for peace, equality, and a new history. Change that redefines Ego-led lives with Heart-energy. Redefines history. Redefines values. Redefines relationships. Reform won’t do it, because trying to reform something inferior caused by bad clay from the beginning won’t change anything: “Sculpt it..” Heart provides new material with which to work.

Do we buy these ideas? Believe them? Why do we fear? Is it all too drastic? Listen: “You may have the courage to look up and out upon me, / The rock, the river, the tree, your country.” Anyone can: “No less to Midas than the mendicant.” Equality enjoyed in terms of opportunity and freedom to choose regardless of socioeconomic status or regardless of history: “No less to you now than the mastodon then.”

How does it start, though? How could a new energy change the course of the history being created today and being defined by Ego ever be changed? The rock, the river, and the tree say, “…look up and out / And into your sister’s eyes, / Into your brother’s face, your country” Recognize that a nation, other nations, governments, institutions, corporations, or any aggregate of people are made up of individuals to be treated and related to as such. Valued.

Therefore, the change, the redefinitions begin with you, with me, individuals. Is this too complicated? No, it’s choosing Heart over Ego to operate our lives. And that does not take much, really. Look into one another’s faces, knowing who we are, and “say simply, / Very simply / With hope / Good morning.”

​Good morning!

As I continue with this poem of Maya Angelou’s, so reminiscent of Walt Whitman and British Romantics in many ways, I am floored by the message this poem conveys, still applicable, now more than ever. The choice to personify elements of Nature like “the Rock, the River, the Tree” reveals Spirit-essence in all. The energies of life beating, vibrating, emitting from all in this Universe waits to be tapped. We raise our minds, souls, and bodies to perceive these frequencies by choosing to hear Heart, discover Self, and create Purpose. Here is my response and thoughts to you, Dr. Angelou, of your profound words of love and light.

From the Rock’s testimony of the past, pronouncements and observations of the present, and prophecy of the future, Maya seamlessly slides into the voice of the River: “Across the wall of the world, / A river sings a beautiful song…” The River offers a place of reflection on her shores, a place to consider her song.

Not many of us consider the unnatural boundaries humanity has traced on the face of globes, those shapes and entities defined by us as nations. Quite often, rivers demarcate the borders: “Each of you a bordered country…” One of the functions of Ego is to isolate. The existence of nations indicates Ego-energy. In my opinion, their existence shows people, mostly men, who deliberately chose Ego and denied Heart.

Strong statement? The river would agree, wouldn’t it, Maya? The river’s estimate of nations recognizes that they are “delicate and strangely made proud…” Why “strangely made proud?” Because they are artificial, they are weak, “delicate.” They rise and fall, sometimes overnight — no cause for pride.

Oh, yes, this is River’s intended message — no doubting: the nations are “thrusting perpetually under siege.” The unbridled expressions of hyper-nationalism seen both now and throughout history in many countries might make egotists think they are powerful, but they’re not. Truly strong nations would not have to fight endlessly. Of course, examples of such nations are hard to come by.
Why? The ability to wage and win wars — the only possible result of Ego-fueled nationalism — is certainly not based on Heart-energy. Rather, this penchant for flexing muscles derives from this: “Your armed struggles for profit / Have left collars of waste upon / My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.”

Nature ravaged by the Ego-choices of humanity, the unabashed dash for wealth, power, and control, results in death and destruction. River has witnessed war from the inception of nations from its unique vantage point of being a border.

How can we learn such deep wisdom? “If you will study war no more.” But what about them? What about the threats? What about those who won’t give us what we want? What about…? Keep asking the questions. The answer is the same: “Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs…” They are songs of peace, harmony, and natural order, the natural laws in place from the beginning “when I / And the tree and the stone were one.”

These are the tenets, the precepts, to which the founders of America were attuned, even though the reality of much of the Natural Law escaped them in practice. However, Heart-energy discerns these laws, always has. Those in the fellowship of the Heart perceive Ego and know that individuals must have the opportunity to discover Self and create Purpose.

When were these laws enacted? “Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow / And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.” No Ego arguments, no rationalizations, no alarmist fears, no hubris and pounding of chests. River, in its ever-flowing course, has a song to sing to us of peace, harmony, and natural law, a song of Heart-energy, Spirit.

There is no virtue in knowing everything, all the political stances, always being right, or whenever superior knowledge is touted as desirable, because no one knows everything except those who know they do not. Omniscience is Ego’s feeble attempt to control our world.

​The evidence of Heart within each of us is found here with the River: “There is a true yearning to respond to / The singing river and the wise rock.” The fact that we, many of us, long for a swift end to foolish Ego hostilities and learn from Nature shows Heart-energy operates in us and longs for productive peace. Hope.

Maya Angelou observes the state of humanity and responds to it through the natural elements of “A Rock, A River, A Tree.”
Why would she do this? It’s a literary tradition, but that’s not the reason. The reason it’s a literary tradition is the reason. Nature is the reason. Our intimate connection and relationship with Nature is the reason.
Because of that relationship, the Romantics often used Nature to reflect the inner emotional state of humans, especially, as Maya does here, to expose the conditions of society or simply illustrate them, the aggregate expression of individuals. We are often slow to learn.
The first eight lines lay out the Rock, River, and Tree as observers of history for eons, since the beginning of this whole ball of wax known as Earth. They witnessed the life, approaching doom, and extinction of the mastodon.
And the Rock, River, and Tree point out that while we may see the dry bones of dinosaurs like this, what we have failed, Failed, FAILED to see — to perceive, to intuit, to conclude — is the “broad alarm of their hastening doom” because no artifacts of that remain — but we should know.
Therefore, they will tell us, and we may learn, we may be warned, rise to respond to the alarm, of all the alarms around us now.
“[T]he Rock cries out to us” by offering a vantage point. We are invited to stand upon its back, its solid, sure, unshakable back. For what reason? What purpose would that serve? Rock tells us it is so that we “may stand upon [his] / Back and face [our] distant destiny.” We can see, know, perceive, and respond — if we would use Nature for the learning.
What might that imply? The Rock has a purpose that has not changed: it is solid, firm, unmoving, and collects evidence of history. Rock asks us, in essence, what our purpose is.
We have the ability to reason, a scale of creation “only a little lower than / The angels.” Our natural state here is one of peace, acceptance, kindness and compassion in the face of difficulties, and the ability to work through challenges and resolve conflicts to the end of freedom, freedom to love one another, to live in light, and create as divinity.
The alarm of our doom, as the mastodon’s did, billows around us, joining that dust of ages past. We “have crouched too long in / The bruising darkness, / Have lain too long / Face down in ignorance.”
In the ignorance of Ego, we have forsaken Heart-energy of love, light, peace, creative enthusiasm, empathy, compassion, and all those emotions and qualities of the higher frequencies of life. The Rock tells us we should recognize the approach of our doom in the warlike atmosphere that grips the nations of Earth: “Your mouths spelling words / Armed for slaughter.”
War, destruction, and hatred are Ego-energies. We have Ego, and it helps form us; however, we have Heart, eternal Spirit as the mature operating system, one we came to live. We have the ability to think, explore, and discover; war, hatred, and bullying, bravado, boastful power are Ego-energies we may rise above through toggling to the Heart Operating System.
The Rock tells us we can gain a vantage point to discern all this, and it willingly offers itself to us. The warning, though, is we have no right to hide under it, to continue living in the low vibrations of Ego and claim it’s human nature. It’s not. It’s a choice.