In the Pines

Today, I was talking with my friend, JoJo, about pines.  It turns out he too has a relationship with pines similar to mine.  He was telling me today that when he is under the pines he feels calm and like the world is right.  (Those are my words of what he was describing to me.)  He was telling me about one pine tree in particular that he loves because it makes him think of his dad.  As we were talking I was sharing with him my love of the pine warbler.  It is my belief they sing to the pines and we are rapidly approaching the time when they begin their spring song.  I was telling JoJo they would begin singing soon.  The earth will begin stirring in just a few weeks and even though our weather will be cold the light will change and the yellow of spring begin to appear.  As I was telling him of their song, as if on cue, one sang.  At first, I was not certain of it - maybe it was just my mind making things up.  Sure enough as the day grew warmer the pine warbler offered its songs to the pines a few more times.  It sang enough for my good friend JoJo to hear it too.  Now, he also knows the pine warbler.  Maybe he will hear them when he is in his stand of pines and think to himself of how they sing so sweetly to the pine trees.

This Old Tree

This old tree
Has been standing longer than me.
It died many years ago.
A large healthy limb in the pine beside it is all that keeps gravity from pulling it to the earth to depcompose. 
I have been watching and waiting
For years now.
Each time I walk near it I look at it and wonder
When it will fall.
I wonder if I will notice it when it is no longer there..
I wonder where it will fall.
And, what it will look like when it does..
And what it will sound like..
It isn't much to look at.
Even the birds stay away from it.
Most humans would never notice it.
It is almost invisible in its standing decay..
I could easily knock it down.
It wouldn't take very much.
But I don't.
Instead..
I wait.

My Friend the River

For most of my adult life I have been in conversation with this river.  She has flowed within the cells of my being long before then.  You see, my grandmother had picnics here when she was a girl and my father used to come fish on the shoals long before I was even a thought carried in the winds of time.  

This river calls to me.  She invites me to her waters in my thoughts and in my dreams.  She has done this since we first met in physical form when I was just a young mother - a budding adult.  Even then the stories she wove for me offered me guidance, though my listening heart could only hear bits of pieces of her wisdom then.

Over the years of my adulthood I have visited her often.  Each time I visit with her she shares with me tales of impermanence, of flow, of light and of darkness.  I love her more with each visit.

Sometimes I sit upon her shores.  Sometimes I sit on the rocks that stand above her waters where she roars fiercely. Sometimes I bathe where bubbles of air drift over her reflective surface effortlessly.  I watch her powerfully run over the rocks slowly wearing away the stories they hold of yesterday.  In some places she runs spread out from shore to shore in her wide expanse flowing slowly and easily - here she whispers tales of expansiveness.  

This elder whose very molecules come from here and from there and everywhere willingly shares the myths of all the lives and all the worlds she has seen and held.  

This river has shaped me like she shapes the shores to which she is bound.  She has sat with me, witnessed me, and journeyed with me through this life thus far in all my emotions and in loving ceremony.

She is my ancestor, my elder, my sister, my friend.