Articles & Poetry

“What would you know,” she said,
that giant maple towering
above the forest floor,
“If you had prayed at sunrise
and sunset each day
for two hundred years?”
“What would you know
if you had stood silent
beneath the starry skies and winter snows,
wept with the rain,
and danced in the wind that long?”
“What would you know if you had listened
to each birds song
and the animals conversing
through day and night?”
“What would you know
if you had witnessed
the coming and going of the plant people
as they moved through their cycles
on the forest floor?”
“What would you know
if you had welcomed each season
budding and leafing,

releasing and letting go

two hundred times with joy?

“What would you know

if you had been present 
each moment laughing

with the hawk, owl, and squirrel

or with only yourself

as you stood alone in the forest?

What I know, having done all this,

is that life is not to be missed.

Each moment of experience is like no other

and will never be repeated,

not even in two hundred years.
Linda Heron Wind