I often feel as if I’m not really here.
But I am.
I am no more or less important
than a wave or a blade
of grass or the crow squawking
in the top of that tree.
It obviously sees me.
I won’t say knows me.
But what does knowing really mean
when we are all so sad
and fleeting?
I crush the grass
and the grass closes over me.
I break the branch
and the forest closes over me.
Everything is true.
Tag
trees
Cresting a hill, you see it: above the fields and the tops of the walnut trees, low in the sky, very close, a giant hot air balloon, red and blue and green.
And there’s a word spelled out on the side, the letters tall as people: T-R-U-S-T.
Trust.
You assume it’s just advertising. You think, there’s the name of a bank on the other side.
But lately you’ve been so anxious. So afraid.
Long ago the Jews believed the Torah was an orchard.
From a distance all we see are trees, but there are branches, too, closer in, crissing and crossing, and there are leaves, a profusion of leaves, and there is the fruit in its many colors, and the nuts in their many shells, and beneath the skin the flesh, and within the flesh the seeds.
And then you reach the bottom. You level out.
And the trees are wheeling past you, the walnut trees, twisting and gnarled. The rows are flashing by, one after the other.
The long, deep, darkening lanes.
Trust was last modified: July 31st, 2016 by deaconcanderson
When, walking in the woods,
I pull out my long black rosary,
the beads loop down and jingle
a little like the leash when I pull it out
to put the dogs back on.
And the dogs, when they hear it,
come running up,
heads cocked, tongues lolling.
No, I say. It’s OK.
And they bound away again.
The Rosary Confuses My Dogs was last modified: July 7th, 2016 by deaconcanderson