SHINRIN-YOKU: BREATHE

Picture collage by The Unknown Gnome

I walk under soft, dark greenness.

Peace falls on me like rain,

The fiddlehead fern of my being

slows,

softens,

opens,

gently unfurls.

I breathe in cedar,

moss,

fungi,

spores

that my Inner Old One

remembers

from centuries past.

Shapeshifters

dance

among the trees, unseen,

but felt,

perhaps in the dust motes swirling

in patches of golden sunlight

filtered through ancient cedar.

Somewhere,

an owl utters

a sleepy "who-hoo?"

Somewhere, a black wolf

watches

through the veil,

his eyes speaking

the language without words.

I feel them

in my soul.

*Shinrin-Yoku is the Japanese practice of forest bathing. We need to do a lot of that in these times. This poem was written last spring, and is shared for Elizabeth Crawford's Creativity Challenge: Breathe.