LIKE TREES: A POEM FOR YOU

by Riana

And in these final days of autumn giving way to the wintery sleep of the earth below, so shall our minds give way to the emergence of a new dream for the days to come.

Shiny bright clarity. A dream of brilliant faith. Our humanity shall not fail us now.

Dreams of rebirth.

In the waning low edge of the lavender shadows at early afternoon, we’re called home to ourselves. To return to who we are at our core.

The long dark night turns the world frosty, while our own clouded exhales create the weather.

Tiny flickers of candlelight in windows remind us of the flame within. To warm. To comfort. To provide that to others.

For we are not simply the regurgitated collective product of seemingly instantaneous programmed fear tonight— no. Oh, no. We are far steadier.

More wise, slow stepping, cautiously curious, ancient, and beautifully intelligent than one year, than one virus, than one moment.

Our human fabric is woven beneath the surface of this recent shifting landscape for millennia. This feeling is not new. The fear, the division, the need to feel seen, heard, validated... all so very unoriginal. And so very human.

So where to maneuver from here? Us small humans? Fearfully catapulting ourselves high into the future, with far too many weights of the past stuck on our sagging wings?

Perhaps we can both recall we’ve been placed here TOGETHER at this uncertain moment in time. To witness it together.

To excavate it together.

To bond together.

Here to root down together with strength. To uplift together with ease and levity. To remind each other of our gifts with celebration. To encourage each other to let go of the dead weight.

And to find stillness, and beautiful vulnerability in the intricacies of our similar skeletons.

Like trees.

Winter trees show us. We can release our coats, stand to be silent, and expose the naked bones of who we truly are— surrounded by infinite others, doing just the same.

Without cloaks to hide our deepest worlds, we see in new ways.

Illuminated in the sparkle of stars even on the darkest night: we see us. Our fellow trees.

And we are free.

❤️