The Wisdom of Trees

Old, lovely trees, how I long to climb the long, dark ladders of your branches to the sky!
Let me dangle from the tip of a twig, grasp the twisted bark, stand on a breeze, feel the heavenly pull.
How I would yearn to let go, and fall in an expansive second into the wondrous blue veil.
I could fall forever through an ocean of air to sparkling black wonder,
wrapped in the glittering firmament of stars.
I could feel the eternity of a moment, like waves in each palm of my hand.
I could see in all directions the touching ends of spacetime, curved like cosmic seashell.
I could ride the dark tide of matter that ever tends to always.
I could learn to breathe in emptiness, drink cold refreshment, eat the nourishment of light.

But I look again more closely, careful trees, and I see your extension in another dimension.
Plunging the depths of warm dark, your roots thrust down into soft soil and muted tones of solidity.
The hairs of your underground organs vibrate with the resonance of planet and potential.
You taste salt's fire, finger crystals' magic, soak in waters' memory, carve defined spaces in clay.
You touch the pulse of Earth with rough hands of kind gentility.
You mark the rhythm of aeons with displays of beauty and new rings of growth.
You know how to be still, and to hold the cosmos from a fixed, constant place.
You are perfectly filled by the richness of where you are.

Which way do you really reach, ancient ones?

I am suspended between terra firma and an ephemeral eternity.
I walk by, in awe of the wisdom of trees.
Grateful for gravity, I take another step, then another.