Daoist Amazon Poems

Creation In the forest, there lies a seed Within that seed, there lies the largest tree in the forest Or, it will be soon For many days and nights, the seed absorbs nutrients And slowly creeps out of the ground I reiterate, the seed was small And yet on the inside there lay a humongous tree Once it finally reached the surface, it began to thicken and grow Once a stalk, the tree took the things around it, Water, sunlight, air And with its instinctual knowledge Grew larger and larger The tree lived with its forest brothers Other trees, shrubs, spiders, monkeys The tree lived in harmony with all of them Growing, living, dying with them Truly being part of the forest As it finally towered above the rainforest it was majestic Any passerby would ask How would he know? Where did he learn? The rich, infinite knowledge

Hidden inside a small, inconspicuous seed To become king of the forest Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know."

Destruction One day, the tree, fell Of course, such a mighty tree was bound to fall For nature is a cycle And one day, its trunk would become weak with age And simply fade back into the Earth However this was no will of nature This was will of the humans Will of humans who interfere with nature Instead of living in flow with it They built a home With the tree And yet The tree never came back The tree was destroyed Many trees were destroyed By will of the humans But later, there were no more trees There was no more anything And so the humans fell through the cracks of the Earth They, too, never came back To understand the limitation of things, desire them.

Regeneration And so, what happened to the trees? A young traveller might ask The humans had, luckily, not anihillated every last tree They had not destroyed every last seed Dried up the last patch of soil Or polluted the last river And so, slowly, steadily, the forest grew again It regenerated, knowing that its presence would not be deterred That special flow of nature carried through And paved the way towards the return of the trees Mind you, the tree did not return Instead, one of its descendants returned to take its place And towered even higher than the past tree could have imagined In many ways different, And yet the instinctualness, the force of nature Was still present And all its nature brethren regenerated as well And the forest was the same again When there is no desire, all things are at peace.