April 19, 2019
A tree just knows
What it needs to grow
It asks not, "Am I doing this right?"
It doesn't feel guilty for shading the plants below
It's probably happy to protect people who linger beneath it from the harsh sun or cold rain
Every year as it lives through its changes
Often a home to birds or insects
It gets to look and listen to life...
The spring flowers
The streams flowing
The ants crawling on its trunk
Young children swinging from its branches
I'm certain it hears the birds singing
Crickets chirping
And sees the butterflies migrating
And the clouds making abstracts in the sky
I wonder if it feels the ocean waves crashing on the beach in the other towns on the coastline
I'm certain it feels the wind massaging its leaves
There are so many trees...just look at them
All growing upward toward the sky, reaching for the sunlight
Some are bursting with life, robust with fruit and flowers
Some have shiny green leaves, or yellow or orange or leaves that are too sharp to touch
Some stand alone on the side of a steep hill
Each is uniquely different and still friend to each other
I think it amazing that like human bodies, trees too grow on their own
No one telling them what to do
Or how to be
Or to hurry up
No one demanding they look a certain way
They just grow
Hmmm...if I were a tree, I wonder where I'd want to be planted
So that I could
Watch, grow and give whatever I wanted
Whenever I wanted
However I wanted
EXACTLY as I wanted
And even, perhaps, as I was meant to
When I was once a tiny seed
Having just landed on the ground
From my great mother oak
