**“Where the Earth Keeps Breathing”**

“Where the Earth Keeps Breathing”

The morning begins in silence,

not the absence of sound,

but a fullness—

the hush before birds compose their hymns,

before the wind remembers its name

and rustles the grass with stories.

There is dew on the blades

like punctuation on a page left open overnight.

Every droplet tells a secret

spoken too softly for the human ear,

but the earth listens.

I walk a narrow trail through tall pines,

each tree a witness older than any monument,

bark carved by storms,

roots tangled in the veins of ancient stones.

The sun parts the branches gently,

stroking the leaves awake.

Light is not sudden;

it’s a slow unfolding,

like forgiveness,

like the memory of a name once spoken in love.

Time moves differently out here—

not by clocks, but by birdsong and shadow.

A squirrel scolds the day

as if it arrived too late for its liking.

A crow watches me with a priest’s solemnity.

In a clearing,

I find a place where time has exhaled—

a fallen tree covered in moss,

its hollow trunk still humming

with the music of decay and renewal.

I sit.

And in this silence, I hear the world breathing.

It is not a sound,

but a rhythm beneath sound,

a pulse in the ground,

in the air,

in me.

I think of all the things I’ve lost:

people who drifted like smoke

through the fingers of years,

words I never said

that now cling to the edges of dreams,

places I once belonged to

but no longer fit inside.

And still, the earth holds me

as if I am enough.

As if I am not broken

but unfolding.

A fox appears—

its body flame and shadow,

its eyes two lanterns

lit with ancient knowing.

We do not move.

We do not speak.

But we recognize one another—

two creatures shaped by hunger and wonder,

by fear and the relentless pull

of what lies just beyond the trees.

When it goes, I do not follow.

Some things are meant to be glimpsed,

not possessed.

The wind returns

like a friend who's forgotten how to greet you,

fumbling through branches,

gathering leaves in its arms,

singing nonsense lullabies

that somehow still soothe.

I lie back,

the ground firm and forgiving beneath me,

and look up through the web of limbs and sky.

How many clouds have passed this way,

changing shapes without apology?

How many stars have whispered to these trees

of galaxies that bloom and fade

like spring flowers in another time’s garden?

And how small I feel,

not in fear,

but in reverence—

a note in the music,

a step in the dance,

a moment caught in the throat of forever.

The world does not need me to be great.

It does not wait for my legacy,

my achievement,

my perfection.

It waits only for me to notice,

to listen,

to breathe in rhythm with the tide of roots and rivers,

to let go of all I thought I must be,

and just be.

And maybe that’s enough—

to stand still in a world that spins,

to weep without shame

at a sunset so beautiful it hurts,

to love without map or measure,

to forgive without condition,

and to remember that we are

brief candles

in an endless dusk

that still matters.

When I rise again,

the path behind me is already fading,

the moss resettling,

the birds resuming their stories

as if I were only a chapter

in the book of morning.

But the breath of the earth

follows me,

and I carry it now,

not as a burden,

but as a blessing.