From the recording Family Portraits (Volume 2)
"Trees" is a bit of an ecological song inspired partly by Richard Powers' novel "Overstory" which my son, Willem, recommended to me (and which I enjoyed reading very much), and partly by one of my cousins, Patick, who has been the forester on an Ashram in India called "Auroville" in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, India, for the last 40 years or so. He has this incredible technique for growing indigenous trees and has reclaimed hectares of forest from encroaching desert. Quite an achievement...and great monument / legacy to leave behind.
Lyrics
Trees
A cover of Australasian leaves
Makes a canopy
For indigenous trees
To grow strong and mighty and tall
Reach up high
To the sky
To the sky
Thought I’d beat the winter blues
In a forest down in Tamil Nadu
Flew BA – yay! – into Chennai
Carbon footprint at an all-time high
Trees
Ooh, they let you breathe, yeah!
Trees
Climb up and you can see there
Miles and miles
All dominion
All the way to the horizon
Wound my way down the Coromandel coast
To Auroville, Pondicherry
My cousin, the forester, was my host
Fed me masala dosa
The forester has his dominion
Sculptor, gardener and tree surgeon
The forest will stand forever
Save the land from encroaching desert
Trees
Ooh, they let you breathe, yeah!
Trees
Climb up and you can see
The future
You can see the sea
Catch a glimpse there
Of eternity
The civil engineer bequeaths
Stone monuments
The forester leaves a living, breathing forest of trees
Trees
Ooh, they let you breathe, yeah!
Trees
Climb up and you can see there
Miles and miles
All dominion
All the way to the horizon
Trees
Ooh, they let you breathe, yeah!
Trees
Climb up and you can see there
The future
You can see the sea
Catch a glimpse there
Of eternity