Step By Step

One foot ahead of the other,
successively exercised,
is a conversation of feet
with dust and pine needles.

Fern fronds reach to
whisper against shins,
like a cat greeting
a familiar friend.

Step by step, each a further
shedding of useless words;
why should the trees care
what anyone thinks?

Each step away
is a step forward
to something new,
like the unfurling of a flower.

Can you hear the hidden stream
that flows inside your body?
Do you know the music
of the falling leaf?

Of most things that can be seen,
all that is heard and felt,
consideration of these
might be most worthy.

For now, the path is all there is
and all there need be;
every step away is a release
from one perspective to another.

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen 

Stillness Sings

This flower opens to the silence within.
The silence within opens
to the supreme stillness without.
Stillness sings;
the flower knows this
because it is alive:
the song is what draws
the bud to bloom.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen