Much smarter than me
You’d be fool not to see
The tree, so wise and so free.
Never doth moving
Or seemingly breathing
Or seeing or learning or knowing.
Not limited to,
Like me and like you,
To running away through the dew.
A tree must be smart
And acquire the art,
Of survival without beating heart.
Teach me, great plant,
For I surely can’t,
Know what you whisper to miniscule ants.
For I know so little
And though I can fiddle
My knowledge is awfully belittled.
By your easy grace
And by your kind face,
For you’ve never needed to run or to race.
With leaves so divine,
And bark grooved so fine
You know naught of tangent or cosine or sine.
Yet how much more you know,
To survive in deep snow,
To be your true self, and just go with the flow.
I admire you so
From your “head” to your “toe,”
Whose birth occurred hundreds of ages ago.
Though you’ve never read,
Nor have slept in a bed,
And though over half of you’s already dead,
You are more wise
For you see without eyes,
The truth in the ground and the truth in the skies.
