Masters of stillness,
masters of light,
who, when cut by something
falling, go nowhere and heal,
teach me this nowhere,
who, when falling themselves,
simply wait to root
in another direction,
teach me this falling.
Four-hundred-year-old trees,
who draw aliveness from the Earth
like smoke from the heart of God,
we come, not knowing
you will hush our little want
to be big;
we come, not knowing
that all the work is so much
busyness of mind; all
the worry, so much
busyness of heart.
As the sun warms anything near,
being warms everything still,
and the great still things
that outlast us
make us crack
like leaves of laurel
releasing a fragrance
that has always been.
A Question to Walk With: Describe a moment in nature when you experienced something older than your lifetime and what that felt like.
Next month, Sounds True is publishing a major collection of my poetry, The Way Under the Way, which contains three separate books of poetry, gathering 217 poems retrieved and shaped over the past twenty years. These poems span my life’s journey and they center on the place of true meeting that is always near, where we chance to discover our shared humanity and common thread of Spirit. The above poem is from the book.
*photo credit: Vladimir Kudinov
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