Hawthorne

Hawthorne Witness Writing

 – 5 November 2025, Linton Park West, Rotorua, New Zealand.

 Copyright Karen Hansen Art

 

I am sitting beneath Hawthorne, in full flower, her mighty trunk at my back.
Today I offer a gift: a segment of mandarin, to match the burnt orange gown I wear,
and the energy of sunlight shining through her canopy above me.

Your shadow, Hawthorne, is the only sacred space I need right now,
a cast circle across the greenscape of undergrowth.
Leather fern climbs your trunk, along with lichens and spiderwebs,
a quiet harmony reminding me that we are never alone.

A small insect flies toward my face, then circles back
on a breath of air scented with pollen and toast from a nearby house.
The air is still fresh, and so I breathe it deeply in.

My lips tingle.
My lower cheek vibrates gently.
I imagine the sunlight through your canopy crowning my head,
and the light becomes mine.

The wind picks up softly, as it always does when co-creation begins.
Your bark crunches against the plait in my hair, catching strands as I lean back.
Shifting, I turn to face you, the light still alive within me.

I observe you.
You are made of many trunks, six, perhaps eight,
climbed by ferns, mosses, lichens, and ivy.
Your bodies twist together like limbs in an embrace,
a spiral dance dividing and dividing
into a great spreading crown.

Your crown flows back toward the earth,
greenery and maidenlike flowers almost touching the grass.
And I realise, this is a toroidal flow,
the energetic architecture of every living being,
as above, so below.

Strands of spider silk catch the colours of light as I watch,
shifting between the seen and unseen.
Light pools at the tip of one leather fern leaf.
Ivy climbs one twisting limb toward the sky.
The wind moves your delicate twigs like antennae.
Flowers shiver and dance in exquisite embroidery.
The dark, criss-crossed patterns in my depth of field
reach toward me and away,
branches nodding in greeting,
clothed ceremonially in green and gold.

And I ask,
"Hawthorne, magnificent sacred tree of my Celtic ancestors,
what heart wisdom do you have to share today?"

Hawthorne replies:

"Grow, erratically, painfully, wildly, beautifully,
into the magnificent sacred being that you are.
Do not shrink.
I know it is easy, especially when others or events
come along and cut away parts of your body, your limbs, your spirit.
But regrow.
Sprout new life in the direction of the damage.

The wounding has given you not only darkness to process into light,
but also the space for new growth to emerge.
We cannot grow when we are full of our old energetic belongings.
We cannot grow while our past experiences still try
to shape us into a mould for others' acceptance.

We must encounter breakage in order to release.
When our sacred space is cluttered,
when our temple of transmutation is filled to bursting
with the possessions of others,
then there is no room to grow,
unless we consciously release, shatter, or explode.

And if the need becomes too great,
and we still refuse to release,
there is an implosion instead.
Destruction takes many forms.
It matters deeply how you grow,
and what you refill, refuel, and recreate yourself with."

I ask,
"Thank you, Hawthorne. Do you have any advice surrounding re-creation?"

Hawthorne responds:

"Do not keep rotting fodder.
Allow its transmutation into soil.
Let decay complete its cycle
and feed the smallest creatures
who have no need of eyes to see in the dark.

Release.
Let go.
Return the ancient pains and ways that no longer serve you.
They were only ever meant to be your soil,
never meant to be enshrined upon an altar of decay,
entombed within your soul and worshipped.

Let them go."