by stolzyblog

First Nation

Look and see; do not see concepts; see what is!

daddy! the clouds move!
the whole sky is moving.
come, look out the window.
he teaches me to stare at a far far tree
and then we count together
silently
to ten, to fifteen
and more and more of the low darkening cloud
is swallowed into the forest

yes, sweetboy, I see it
thank you so so much for telling me!
I hold his hand lightly
and think about the life in movement
and it wakes in me a thought

it is cause it moves so slow
we do not usually see
know what, sweetboy?
the forest also moves
the forest moves too! it walks!

he gives me the look
when he knows 99% I am joking again
but then holds it open, a smidgen

it’s true
if we could look with superslow eyes
then see one thing for one hundred years
(we would have to count silent
a long time
to more than a million!)
and new baby trees would spread
coming closer very slowly
they can go everywhere
even on streets and parking lots
only the bulldozers are stopping them

once there was a forest
from here to the Mississippi River, sweetboy
the Indians were smart
they just let it keep walking.

_______RS

[ Image : this is a snippet from one of the many paintings by Mary Louise Holt, whose subject matter often is the imagined world of the Eastern woodland indigenous tribes, and nature as well. ] (link)

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20 Comments

  6. Unknown's avatar

    sweet composition! Luv that baby trees crawl towards each other. Eventually, they meet and hug, don’t they — when their branches touch? And the clouds above clap from delight that there is love in the land?

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