I listen to the river
and wonder,
can I ever learn her language?
Or the deep, quiet lake,
or the restless, rushing waves of the ocean.
Can I learn the language of the trees
as they whisper to one another on the wind?
Or the slow language of the rocks,
and the earth and the sands?
I watch the clouds
and listen to the wind,
but there is so much more than I can grasp. Still, I love to listen
What secrets
have we forgotten
that we learned from the trees
What lessons
have the winds taught
that we no longer recall
Have the moon and the seas
stopped speaking to us
or have we just stopped listening
I walked up the hill
past the old climbing tree
and down the path
into the woods.
There is a deep layer
of dead, brown leaves
from last year,
maybe several years.
They crunch under foot,
like walking through skeletons.
Yet, the buds on the trees
are swelling, greening.
This is not morbid,
it simply is
the way things are,
life and death together.
Perhaps
our insistence
on separating the two,
on fearing and denying death
is what’s abnormal.
In Other Words 