How this could have
happened I will
never hear again
but it happened
all the same
exactly this way.

I was walking in
Prairie Creek
surrounded by my
soon to become silent
companions
when I noticed
events so
strange.

I dug my feet
into the dirt
they soon dissolved
and roots were
sprung
a nervous system extending into
the soil, oh the sounds the
smells I felt.

Where my skin once was
bark began to emerge
my fingers became tiny
clones of myself
each speaking different
tongues I could not comprehend
I made out these
words "our time has begun. "

I became a Buddha
on the road
a three quarter
smile on my lips
as my body grew
towards the sun
a thousand years
was now mine
and to it I did
succumb.

I watched the
generations pass
Christs come and
go and come again.
It all meant nothing
to me at all
as long as I have
this fog that nourishes
me and creatures living
in the canopy.

I stand at peace
for centuries
a thousand years
and still my life
is a five minute
dream filled with all
possible intensity
and former attachments
as the impermanence
of the illusion of
time was plain
to see
as human lives whirlwinds of
experience
dust devils
blew by me.

Lightening and fires burned me
but I survived.

Now that I stand in
this silence
lost in the meditation
of dreams
a solitary tree
the last standing
a brand new species
born of evolutions breeding
runs on the ground
dancing on my grave

I remember that
first day
the beginning of my
thousand year awakenings
I think it was only
yesterday.