For a tree

 

I am thinking of a tree. 
I can accept it as an image... 
I can feel it as a movement... 
I can define it as a species... 
But what can also happen, if beauty and will meet, is that as I think of the tree 
I am led towards a relationship, and the tree ceases to be an It... 
Does the tree have a consciousness, similar to ours? 
I have no experience of this... 
What I encounter is neither the soul of the tree, nor some nymph of the trees, but the tree itself.

*Buber, Martin, I and Thou (1923), Scribner's, New York, 1970, σσ. 57-59*