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Wednesday, December 21, 2016

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.

2 comments:

  1. I love the fiddlehead fern of your being. What a delightful and wonderful way of saying so much. Thanks Sherry,

    Elizabeth

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for sharing this wonderful dream

    ReplyDelete

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