Waves surround us
cradle our new bodies
in warm currents
bring us to foreign shores
deliver us to a waiting world

We learn to swim
soon our feet touch the floor
we look and judge the ocean
making our own waves
and our waves make more

In time the waves recede
carrying those who need to leave
resting their minds
washing the beaches clean
for new waves to find

A voice is calling
in less than a shout
It's more than a root
and less of a sprout

It's less of an in
and more of an out
but more than a roar
or expressing a doubt

It's a voice that's about
what's within and without
but more than what's in
and less of what's out.

The absence in the trees
is like a whisper,
and I remember old words that fell
like little leaves.

And tomorrow I hope I will listen
and walk back with you through the
wisdom of your hidden meanings.
Trying to make sense of your leanings
and all I was missing.

Because the absence of you
just leaves me,
and the memories of trees
that we played in as children.
And of parents who always
believed in forgiveness

Is it I or them, that fate has forced
to shadow in my lifeless eyes
for truth has bitterness to pay
and flame light flares along its path

when right and wrong are undiscerned
and creatures stir within their cage
when parents clip the wings of birds
and suffer them their broken ways

there lives between uncertain wrongs
an urge to end the war outside
to flee from all you say is true
and debts that cost too much to pay

yet finding manifested strong
the time to read between the lies
we spindle back the fraying cord
that blindly leads us to the grave

I've sauntered to the blackened gates
and laughed out at the red inside
that fails pride and injures truth
and falls down where it cannot rise

The wind blows
in the trees
and It exists - this I know -
because science
can show wind
is just atmospheric flow.
Condense it to a liquid
and separate it to gas
and see atoms of wind
through a microscope's glass.

Ignorance bows people
to their knees
and He exists - this they know -
because men
wrote a book
a long time ago.
condense it to faith
and separate it from reason
and blissfully accuse
anything different of treason.

Do you want to live forever?
said the Gardener to me,
tending to a creeping thought
and watering the sea.

I replied, no, but thanks, you see,
I'd rather be a tree.
And spread my branches out
to
shelter creatures underneath.

A tree? A tree? He whispered tentatively.
Why, I can't remember what it be.
That word. That thought. That memory.
He shook his head and shrugged at me.

(So I scratched a crude drawing in the dirt
and The Gardener squatted there pondering at it a while,
robes lifted up above bony knees)

But I do that too, said he, jumping up quite suddenly.
Pardon me, but I just see no need - No need to be a tree!
Just beg a princely role of me
and I shall fill your fantasy!
I said, thanks, but well, you see..
I'd rather be a tree.

He paused for quite a while.
Then said okay, a little hesitantly.
Then said that he would not be that okay
until he sees these silly things called trees.
And until he sees the purpose of the thing it is
that means so wonderfully much to me
to
want to be a tree.

So he turned me to a tree and put me in a park.
Where couples came and families
and cuddling lovers in the dark.
And colored birds were friends to me
and I sheltered all of them beneath.
And spread new life through little seeds
and quenched the world its need to breathe.
And in the autumn dropped my leaves
to feed the insects in the weeds.
I stretched my roots in luscious ground and saw such beauty all around.
I was
old and happy as only a tree
could ever wish or hope
to be.
And then one day I saw a face, quite out of place, was watching me.

And he said..

You are very naturally a tree
and have done so extraordinarily well in green
that I will leave you be to live your dream.
And as he walked away, it seemed
he smiled happily back at me.

There was a reason I did what I did for a reason.
A reason the reason was there for a reason.
A reason for stopping. A reason. A thing.
And a reason to stop thinking reasons for things.
But the thing might still reason to thingstop and stop.
All this reasoning and then when the reason is got.
All the reasons for things I'll stop reasoningstop.
And just thingdrop my reasons.

The reasoning lot.