this is how the mountain grows…

stone remembering its own fire,

the river carving grace

from its persistence.

this is how the soul learns

what the seasons already know:

that falling apart

and coming back together

are both forms of devotion.

growth is the body remembering

what the spirit always carried,

that beauty can rise

from the ache of endurance,

that grace is sometimes only

the willingness

to keep walking.

What is a weed?

What is a flower?

Who decides what beauty is

and what it isn’t?

Are those flowers,

battered by the storm,

less beautiful?

Unworthy of notice?

An injured butterfly appears,

fluttering above me,

circling softly,

then resting beside me

on the rock.

Battered.

Torn.

Still flying.

Still beautiful.

And in that moment,

I realize…

I have all the answers I need.

a single moment.

the right time,

the right place.

eye to eye

with the wildness of life.

breath caught.

my own wild rising inside.

a nod of recognition.

we each belong

in our own way.

a person can cause deep hurt and never understand that they have done so.

i have witnessed a person make fun of another’s ignorance while being completely unaware of their own.

we can look at the same sunrise and each see it differently based on which direction we face. we’d paint a different sky and insist on our truth.

i have lived a moment in life where the person who harmed me truly couldn’t see it any other way. she was the victim and it was i who had wronged her. only to realize she was seeing it through another’s lies.

i have been wrong before, too blind to see the truth.

there is a possibility that in my blindness i could harm another, and i hold that possibility carefully.

experience has taught me to trust my judgment, but it has also taught me how easily certainty can outrun truth.

there is too much at stake when another human heart is involved.

every person i meet carries a history i cannot see, wounds i do not know about, loves that shaped them, fears they rarely speak of, and a story far larger than the small piece i am allowed to witness.

so when i stop and look again, when i question my own conclusions, when i ask myself if there is something i am not seeing, it is not indecision.

it is reverence.

reverence for the possibility that i may be missing something.

for the complexity of another life.

friendships becoming family.

laughter carried on the evening air.

a fox slipping through the dusk.

clouds breathing poetry into life.

and one pine standing witness

to a gift.

the day asks nothing more of me.

at last,

i can set it down.

i will not pluck these clouds from the sky and place them into organized time slots.

i will simply watch.

and see which cloud follows me home.

perhaps every song

is simply a way of saying:

i was here.

i think slow mornings matter so much to me because they allow me to move slowly enough

to walk through the forest within me.