Meditation on a Pinecone

For the storms and fires that rage in hearts
are no more gentle than the infernos
surging across summer slopes in drought,
leaving the ashes of forests in their wake.

What difference, the devastation of dreams,
the very rendering down to cinders,
of possibility, of future, of hopes, of self—
that so agonizing Grief of the Gaps?

Does Nature tell the seed when it is time,
or does it dare so greatly never knowing?

Perhaps there is no secret in the cues
seemingly so impenetrably mysterious to us,
the thinking, self-critical intersections
of falling angels and rising apes.

Perhaps safety is no more guaranteed
for the burgeoning pine than for the people
who look upon them with marveling eyes,
but an unconscious hope that guides them on.

Perhaps the self-same hope of change and life,
we then delude ourselves from with stories
of “this will never change” or “this is who I am”,
as if anything is immune from metamorphosis. 

What would happen if we changed the story,
drawing no border between our senses of self
and the ever ardent regrowth we witness flourishing year after year before our eyes?

I think we would find another intersection
between what we have been, who we are,
and the heights of what we can be in time.