Mary Ann Honaker
We Walk the Earth
and the earth reaches up to feel our footprints. It takes them in, a heartbeat among other heartbeats.
Zeno of Elea baffled his neighbors when he ran out of his house and down the street, shouting, “All is one!”
I stop and the fallen leaves cradle my shoe. Leaves cackle when you pass over them, and moss speaks so quietly one would think it mute. I sink down.
Einstein said the universe is finite, but has no borders. You and I are fields of energy. Our borders are an illusion. Everything is one; was this what Einstein meant?
I step among the dappled trees and I am dappled too. The leaves play a melody over my face. Its notes are light and shadow.
The trees, connected by their root systems, the great being that is the forest, knows that I am here.
I like to touch the moss. It is soft and often damp. The earth has grown hair. If I could pull back to the height of the moon, I could see the patterns it makes.
I breathe and the trees breathe. We are exchanging breath.
The universe goes on and on, perhaps forever, and I am a part of it. I am the universe itself.
A bird hides itself by hopping to the opposite side of a tree’s trunk. It releases its minute peep, calling down the mountain instead of up.
I am on the mountain’s backbone. It sighs and the trees vibrate, almost unnoticeably.
The little bird, too, is the universe. The bird and I aren’t on opposite sides of a tree; the tree, the bird, and myself are one.
Last year, the neighboring mountain was on fire. The fire, like a ghost, could not cross the river; but the other mountains felt the heat, and the whole forest trembled.
I am one with the earth I walk on. Our energies touch and merge. Language collapses.