To See Your Face in the Forest

Oh so you are feeling alone in the world?
Might you instead
like to see your face in the forest
and know it as your own?
And then, like an intimate lover,
acclaim the beauty you adore out there—
amidst stately tall trees of grandeur and
mountain creeks singing with joy and
mule deer dancing and chickadees chirping—
all, all innately one with who you are too

To see your face in this Forest
and know it as your own
you must first let go
of who you think you are,
of what you know,
of all you were taught
in school of a world
of this and that—
separating parts from wholes—
and believing you might know
the man by his skin,
or believing that naming
is the same as knowing.

You must let go too
of all you were taught in church,
of a God who lives out-there,
somewhere else but here.

Here!
Inside your own chest,
in your own heart,
in your own direct perception
of the un-namable mystery
right in front of you,
that you swim in,
that you are.