The View from Here

I enter the forest like into a temple

There is a purple thistle

at the entrance

and the moss on the Alder tree

is so soft.

Spiders made webs

on the path

between Sword Ferns:

connecting and trapping.

I wait for my senses

to get adjusted to a different world:

light is diffused,

in moisture, sounds,

mushrooms, soil.

This is the song of a Banana Slug:

To pause,

to dream,

to wait for a vision;

this is the dance

of a Banana Slug.

by Hirsh Diamant