Natural Heritage

September 2013
Michael Gollin

Sun rays filter through green leaves.
Crickets chirr.
Gentle gnats drift above a log
and spiders’ webs shimmer, waiting.

A rivulet of water winds down
the creek bed behind me in our valley,
where I sit leaning against a tulip poplar,
reading and writing in this temple of Nature,
facing West, and waiting for the sun to set
upwards, through the canopy,
so I can break my fast with my family
and millions of others.

Every tree that ever lived,
every tree that will exist,
will drop one day,
by wind or saw,
slow or fast,
following its leaves in a final Fall.

Do not mourn them,
or not for long.
It is their fate
to reach for the sky,
then descend to the earth
as these pillars of the woods
become lumber, fuel,
or soil for new growth.

My grandparents left their distant homes
for the long crossing here
on a quest to foster a new world.
They came and went like so many more,
and lived and worked and loved
and left us to continue their journey.
On we go, gratefully.

***