The kinship between churches, cathedrals, and forests has always been intuitive for me. These are places where I always went when I sought silence - silence to concentrate, to reflect, to recharge, or just to wonder; and it's where I still go today when seeking the same. Places of tranquility, places of awe, places of inspiration.

When I first read but the title of Wendell Berry's poem, I immediately saw before my eyes a wall of tall trees, beeches most likely, lining the side of a forest clearing, their glistening trunks resembling the silvery pipes of a church organ. Reading the poem itself, however, is an entirely different challenge, one where afterward I might just go and seek out that silence again.

This particular tree here, with its winding and twisting branches prominently featured by the glaring sun against the walls of St. Lukas, in the Lehel quarters of Munich, is a favourite of mine for inner city flora, and the proximity of the plant and the building is something I always relish when passing by.