The Forest
I hugged an enormous tree,
a really enormous tree,
more enormous than you would think,
and I’m not sure it noticed
little me …
begging attention like a toddler clinging to her mother’s leg,
and was it really the point that the tree would notice …
my touch,
my breath,
my presence?
My presence there was fleeting,
a blink in the life of that tree
as old as Jesus.
So small,
so very transitory,
so insignificant and powerless,
I love you tree, I do.
Thank you for putting me in my place.
Yes, it was that place,
the forest,
where God seeped out,
not in the enormous tree,
not just there,
not just in the earth,
not just in the smells of dry wood and dust
and the occasional pine needle.
No, God was in the fabric.
God was the fabric of the forest.
Timeless energy,
in the living,
and in the dying and decay,
in the air and the earth,
ineffable yet present,
unchangeable in the midst of the
unceasing life cycle of the forest,
and I was there too.
Did you feel me, God?
Did you notice me there, if only for a moment?
And does it change anything if You did?