Usually the trees in the woods are pretty silent,
maybe some whispering,
murmuring among themselves. You know,
tree stuff.
Sometimes they intone elegant, lofty things,
“Life.” Or, “Patience.”
The Word.
Today, their hands beseeching, they blurted out,
“We need you.”
I’m a foreigner here, I thought, a trespasser.
“We need you.”
Coming home, all the cars on the road,
and the folks in them, driven,
their speeding was pleading, “We need you.”
The houses, the newspapers on porches,
the people trapped in the newspapers
cried out, “We need you.”
In my window seat I pray
for that inner pentecost
when what is impossible
falls upon me, flows through me,
through all of us,
like fire.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net