The way the wind is blowing
all gentle and slow,
it makes the branches
look like they are dancing
leaping and embracing
reaching and saluting
moving
of their own free will
and not at the mercy
of some outside force.

So perhaps we've had it wrong
all this time.
Perhaps it is not the wind
that moves the plants
but the movement of the plants
that causes wind.

Perhaps
when a great and mighty tree
has blown over
uprooted by a storm
what has really happened
is that the bondage
of the earth burying her feet
drove her finally
after centuries
mad
so that the storm was just
an expression,
the equal and opposite
reaction
of the atmosphere
to her mood.
Perhaps
in one great desperate lunge
to be free at any cost
not even knowing what to do once freed
or even maybe truly knowing she could then do
nothing but expire,
the tree threw herself from the soil
and the mere force of this choice
itself tossed the air of the world
into a hurricane.

How are we to know this
in a reality
where light, sound,
and the thought of every soul
at every moment
travel each at a different speed?


by Sara, copyright 1999, all rights reserved