“AGING TREE”
I stand wherever I am planted. I have no choice about where I age. I take what comes to me; heat, rain, snow, cold, darkness, light.
Long nights and I am alone; lonely. I may have thousands of other trees around me and yet I am lonely. I don’t know them; they don’t know me. I don’t know how I contribute to their lives and they have no idea how they contribute to mine. We are feet apart and yet miles away. Yes, lonely.
All life is in motion around me. It can move and surround me. I can not move around it. I can not move at all. I have to take what life comes to me and observe it from where I am planted. I can only observe it from where I stand.
Life moves near and then disappears. I can not hold onto it. It passes by like a gentle breeze; here one minute, gone the next. Did it change me? Did I change it? Did we even have the chance to touch each other?
What difference have I made among these thousand trees? Have I helped or hindered with any life at all? Have I cleansed the air or polluted the ground; produced seeds or hindered propagation; been I been a refuge for rot or a greenhouse for growth? When I whither and become forest floor, could I say that I have contributed to life or hindered it?
I can only stand where I have been planted. In this place, I have to be satisfied with what is put before me. I can not search life out; it has to come to me. And so I am always waiting. Waiting for purpose; waiting for something to impact; waiting for answers…waiting, waiting, and waiting.
As I age, I wonder why I even wait anymore; why am I even here, in this lonely forest of a thousand trees. What good will the remaining time do?
I am an observer who longs to be a contributor. Have I contributed to life at all? If so, why is it so unknown to me? Shouldn’t I have been told when I had impacted another life, whether good or bad; made a difference here in this lonely forest of a thousand trees?
And so I wait; not moving, not really living and only existing. Age comes and I become contribution to the forest floor; needle by needle; bit by bit.
I stand wherever I am planted; I die wherever I am planted.
And life passes by…
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