by Martin Heflin

Created on: October 20, 2009   Last Updated: October 21, 2009

The Cathedral of Trees

In the cathedral of trees
at dawn's first rose
the giant Om of life's early
breath is pulsing through the
worm filled soil.


But you would not come this way
to the cathedral of trees...
skipping the fence at field line
just off the road, where
only at the angle is the gap
in the tree line seen.

You would come from the trailhead
The long way.
Through dusk cloaked and dew soaked vale
heart beating loudly into the hollow air,
up the ridge line
to come to this place
and see rose dawn's blush and stand
silently in the cathedral of trees.

Arms thrown wide and chest back
through a gap in the blue lightness
of dawn with Venus peering through the
leaf thinning dome.

It is September and you know
the choirs will soon be bare like St. Paul's
after the Blitz.
And you will see this place in the winter's steel blue
Though not at this hour.

But now, in the cathedral of trees
I see you run on.
Prayers and meditations passed
Through the gap I return
Across the boot-wetting grass.
Your path the one of commitment,
Mine the one of conviction, but hearts sewn in silence
in the apse of the great oaks and sycamores beat
together; a synchrony of faith
strengthened at the altar of the cathedral of trees.

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