The Sacred Woods and the Network

I come to the sacred woods again. Surely, a network of life lives through these parkways. How many people worship here? Call it exercise, walking, time in nature, relaxation… some make altars at the trees. Often, I sit and breathe.

 

I know these woods are cared for officially by the UNCA experimental Forest manager. But the richness of life they give is so profound, and so many people who live here benefit. 

Life is sustained, perpetuated, and remembered in part by a connection with our deeper roots as human beings. Some say human history is 6000 years old – but I know it is much, much older than that. Perhaps we have not been "human" long, but we have existed forever. Our form traces back through manifestations upon manifestations, back   through unknowable stars, to the very first rustling thrum of our universal Bell, when the world was so dense that it existed as liquid reverberation. 

And so, to be in a place that remembers our evolution, our essence, and the fact of the myriad pathways that gave rise to the 10,000 things with which we find ourselves perpetually surrounded, and to know that They are so in ineffably and truly alive, is to remind us of our roots and connection. And to be present in the chaordic patterns of a Nature wilder then the squared angles of our human fabrications is to vibrate with all of the unhuman potentials that reside still in the genetic memories of our being.

To keep us wild is to remember the genetic ancestries of our mind. To breathe as air the immediate dense exhalations of a million myriad plant creatures is like inhaling the breath from a lover's lips at one centimeter in the flush of heat energy of sensuality. Only, this is not a lover to fuck lightly. It is an experience to take totally. 

"The trees are in love with the wind.

See them turning and sighing in her arms. 

See them whispering in every ear.

They are forever entwined.
And are they ever as one?"

The subtle spit from her mouth enters his pores.

They inhale her fragrance and extract energy for growth. 

They grow strong with her eternal caress.
And she?

She changes into the moment-away-from-flame,

Into the almost-combustible earth,

From the collective sigh of every Sun-transforming cell

Across the entire face
Of our planet-Mother.

<BEAT> 

I step into this bliss.

I step again into this. 

Again, I move through this.

Into life as one kiss

Again I move in this

Move with breath and bliss

Stand and breathe this gift

Know that we are this

Own this life as gift.

And so I move in a land that we eat as locusts and worship as kin. Should not eating then be only done as worship? Do we not realize and remember the source of such rituals?

Is each step not a tiny death? Is each breath not a living transformation?

Is each life not an arc of the sacred / like one long exhalation?
With the long-inhale coming in the darkness between, / in the passage of which we can only dream...