A single branch on every tree reaches closest to the sky.
From Leaving No Stone Unthrown, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The wind came through hard this afternoon and I sat out the worst of it in the big sycamore at the corner of the Hollands' yard. From down in the crown it looks like a hundred arguments going on at once, every limb insisting it is the important one. I used to think a tree grew upward the way a crowd moves, all together, no one out front. Then the gusts flattened the whole canopy sideways and for a moment I could see the top of it plain: a single branch on every tree reaches closest to the sky, and the rest of them spend their lives making that one possible. It is not the thickest branch. In the sycamore it is a thin gray thing I would not trust my own weight to, and I weigh almost nothing.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Living in a black-and-white world drains life not only of its color, but its wisdom.
- We expect life to treat us all the same though we each ask for something different.
- Not every light lights the way home.
- Those who are lost try hardest to get others to follow.
- Most men want what most men want.
- An angry leader commands your attention but not your respect.