This meal is the labor of countless beings;
let us remember their toil.
– Zen meal chant
“What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants the friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
The shaft of beauty, towering high;
He plants a home to heaven anigh
For song and mother-croon of bird
In hushed and happy twilight heard –
The treble of heaven’s harmony
These things he plants who plants a tree.”
– Henry Cuyler Bunner, The Heart of the Tree