Soaking Deep

I took my soul for a walk in the forest & found my lost self

Photo by Nitish Kadam on Unsplash

“What you extend you are.” A Course In Miracles

These thoughts I cast before me like seeds
erupting in one deliberately slowed
heartbeat into redwoods, sequoias, Hinoki cypress.

Overlong I have wandered

within thickets of honey locusts and hawthorns—
invasive if not properly managed,
their dirty work fathoms deep beneath
manicured thorns and briar patches
of disinformation berried with red caps.

It is so tempting, feels so right,
so righteous to judge them in turn.

Yet what I project, I become.
Seasons of misguided epiphanies
and willful journeys
have tattooed my soul with this lesson.

And, so, I open
as a moonflower pirouetting, into the embrace
of my sibling redwoods and sequoias –
Hinoki cypress sacrificing
themselves, transfigured into a soaking tub.

That – no longer awash in the muck
splattered from clouds and nimbostratus crowds
of fearful unknowing and obedient duplicity –
I may fashion a crown from hawthorn thorns
dipped in honey locust and oleander sap
and become

a hushed pool
reflecting kindness and sorrowful compassion,
filled to Mother Earth’s core with the empathy they so lack
or, Heaven help them, have willfully lost.

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A meditation inspired by current events and the sacred current in my life called A Course in Miracles. Thank you,

Thomas Gaudex

&

Louise Foerster

, for the home at Scribe, both here and on Medium. Thank you, dearest readers — trees of loveliness and succour, all of you. jb

My prose Substack, A Septuagenarian Sings, can be found here.