Didn’t realize how noisy I was ’til I went outside.

How relevant I thought I was.

How ridiculous and small I am.

But outside

– In the wind and the green and the birdsong –

In beholding flora’s quantity, array

All my petty clamberings are silenced:

Within and without.

I am quieted.

Restored.

Perhaps it’s the absence of my own kind

Or

Perhaps the silent roar of “wilder” things

Fulfilling their respective states of being

Remaining true to their natural functionings and purposes

None ill equipped or unsuited for their work

(so far as they know)

Naturally enlivens

(Even without a sense of one’s own diminishment)

Fresh air in my lungs

Hushed by the vast green of plants in my sight

I wonder why

Sometimes humanity seems more to eat up so much life

When ours is all potential to add to it.

Why creation’s forsaken in our forgetting –

How and why we die in our detachment from earth and sky and creatures.

If there’s to be death,

May it be of the worst parts of us:

– My sense of my own importance, to start, –

And let there be a remembering of the life that surrounds.