Saturated shades of green pressed up against the canvas of the crisp open air
The beauty contrasting with the vast, empty, blue sky
I stand and I marvel at wisdom formed into such beauty
The adversity brought by storms and struggles you must have faced through drought,
The moss that covers the scars inflicted by relentless windstorms,
The rings that circle around your trunk showing your timeline through life's defining moments,
The knots that show your visible imperfections coming together in breathtaking harmony,
And the sap that cries, slowly down your bark
But what amazes me most.
What truly holds me captive.
Is not just what I can see.
On the contrary,
It is what I cannot see.
Cannot touch.
It's what lay quietly beneath my feet,
That's what I want to come to know.
Because the beauty of your shades of green
The turnover of your fragile leaves
The resiliency that replaces the branches that were ripped away
And the consistency of your core,
Hold nothing to what lay beneath this dirt floor.
You stand so tall, yet your presence lives amongst us all
You show the world what beauty means through your shades of green
And the depths of your wisdom is shared through the visible struggles of life's storms.
Yet all of that beauty
All of that strife
Could not have been weathered without the roots of your life.
So
I stand and I marvel at the wisdom it took to form such beauty
Knowing that under my feet lies the intricate life force that made you what you are
What started from a seed
Sprouted you into what stands so tall
Like a maze they run, turning and twisting
Each turn influenced by life choices
Stretching down
Deep into the earth
To support what stands above ground
A firm foundation for when the blizzards roll through
That is the wisdom I want to know
That is the beauty that makes this whole forest glow.
...Without it there would be no
Saturated shades of green pressed up against the canvas of the crisp open air.
- Casey Noack