It’s a place of healing,
the forest floor.
A place alive with secrets and knowing.
My learned sense of reality catches on the brambles and thorns as I pass,
and the tentative uncertainty of my untrained step
loosens with the soil on my feet
in the puddles on the path.
It’s a place of healing,
the forest floor.
A place intent on living.
Where each movement beneath the
towering company of life informs the next.
A little slower this time.
A little softer.
More quiet.
And with each surrendering breath,
another can be heard.
One more colossal and unified in its polyrhythmic sway.
The trees and vines and creatures with their watchful eyes,
and the earth underfoot,
swell and recede in a merry yawn.
On my twilight walk to fetch water
the dark patiently dilutes all colour,
but allows detail a stolen moment to define my way.
The texture of bark on the lean oak trees around the spring,
the burbling contortion of their reflection at its yielding mouth,
the lichen-rough rocks,
smoothed at the water's edge,
all persist and scintillate into grey.
The soft pricked dendrites of moss cushion my knee
as I slip and fall,
one foot in the spring!
And my scream and giggle pierce the listening night,
and there is no other human being in sight.
So I sit. Wet and still. In the moss.
For tonight, when the darkness stretches its veil impenetrably-tight
over the forest I shall be inside,
to find my place within it's creeping, writhing breath.
Its a place of healing,
the forest floor.
Where living things may grow.
