Maybe I Am A Tree

We are a piece of everything

And I, myself, a smaller part of that same grand everything;

Individual but crowded, my very body an ecosystem for other living things.

I feel alone and yet I feel I am part of some bigger collective --

Not of humanity but of something broader.

I see myself in a deer venturing past the tree line and onto the steady road,

Frozen in fear of the very thing that will kill her if she does not move.

I feel myself in a sapling emerging from the forest floor,

Struggling to feel the sunlight under the already grown trees.

I see myself in the large rocks on the riverbank,

Slowly eaten away by the deceptively gentle water.

I feel myself in the old house on the corner that no one’s lived in for years,

Wallpaper peeling and plaster cracking as the spiders and insects take residence.

Am I a person or a thing?

Am I anything at all?

If we say everything is significant does that mean nothing is?

If some giant put everything on a petri dish like a splotch of bacteria

All they would see is a dot of unintelligible matter --

A literal primordial ooze with no apparent significance.

Which speck of slime is the eyelid of a newborn child?

Which is the leaf of an oak tree, just beginning to turn red?

After all, what is the difference between a person and a tree?

They grow.

They consume what they need to survive and adapt when they must.

They sow seeds to make more of themselves.

They die in the cold.

Maybe I am a tree after all.

Maybe I will never know what I am.

To the sky I am nothing;

Though I know her she does not even know of my existence.

Does anyone?

When those giants look at our little bacterial culture in their glass dish

Would they ever peer close enough to see me?

Does their microscope magnify that far?

Would they even care if they did see?

Am I that small, that insignificant?

For at times I feel as though I am floating in a pool

And the water is that big ineffable everything -- liquefied, clear and odorless.

I could not list all the things in the water,

Nor will I try; it’s far too much

And the pieces don’t matter anyway.

They’re gone now –

Identity lost, blended into something new.

All I know is that the water is warm, verging on too hot.

It’s comforting and painful.

I want to stay here.

I want to get out.

I can never be a part of the water because then I wouldn’t be floating;

I wouldn’t be anything.

The water is everything and nothing

And it’s maddening to think of it.

My head spins pondering the pool and yet it still keeps me afloat.

At times I think it isn’t real.

At times I think nothing is.

I do not want to be floating in the middle of everything,

Insignificant and drifting.

But the water keeps me

And I haven’t found the right reasons to leave it yet.