seventy-one times around the sun
(a forty billion mile run),
i’d clung to earth both day and night
as thirty thousand times it spun.
*
and now, at four or five dogs old,
my body’s grown by thirty fold–
no matter how you add it up,
it comes to just one life, all told.
my morning was free
so i went for a walk,
and i found a small tree
growing out of a rock,
and i stood there in shock
as the thought came to me:
the earth is the rock
and i am the tree.
–photo by me
life is poetry–
a free-flowing form
of self-expression;
line by line,
our lives
pass into poems.
some are sonnets;
others are odes,
haiku, epic, free verse.
some take
a tanka turn–
i think mine must
be a limerick.
–photo by me
no matter how far
back into the sticks i go,
life’s there to greet me
–photo by me
are we
unknown,
in cloistered swirl,
and not yet citizens?
or
are we
alone,
an oyster’s pearl,
the only denizens?
time will tell
or not
life is but a wooden fence
that stretches ‘cross the grounds
and circumnavigates the deep
with countless ups and downs
life is wooden mile-posts
with threaded rails of time
standing sun-bleached hand in hand
on felted lawn sublime
life is wooden moments
reaching out of sight
a wooden skeleton by day
a memory by night
–photo by me
i follow deer trails through the forest
they always find the easiest routes
the ravens in the tall white pines
start their morning jamboree
as i slip easily beneath
the great canopy
of needles
life
these trees
and birds and deer
and all life in the forest
pulses with that same cell
splitting apparatus that i have
we share the double helix of dna
the forest is very alive and i can feel it
michaeljordahl 