Exploring
On a cool foggy morning,
Only me and Grandpa Joe are awake
we are going to explore the woods today
there seems to be no path, but Grandpa Joe knows the way
the leaves are wet under the huge trees
large banana slugs… sleek, yellow, making s and c shapes on the moss
we watch for a while,
then moved on…
When exploring the woods you have to move slow,
quiet and look with your heart.
Grandpa Joe points to a fallen branch
I carefully lift it… slowly to not disturb the creatures beneath
First… nothing appears,
then …I see them….one…no two!… slender salamanders
Carefully, slowly, I placed one in my open hand,
tiny legs…way too small for the body,
they look like an afterthought….
I wonder about why the legs were so small…
I carefully returned it to where we found it
Grandpa Joe said we need to respect the small things
so we placed the branch
exactly back
the way it was, because
When exploring the woods you have to move slow,
quiet and look with your heart.
We used our walking sticks to keep from slipping on the wet leaves
Slowly we climb the hill
past old redwood stumps that sometimes…. seem like hunched trolls
their hair… twigs of huckleberry…and poison oak!
grandpa Joe points to the place where the stump burned in a fire
the inside…dark, deep… made a small cave
a nice place for elves to live I thought
around the tree were the younger shoots
the old giant, the mother tree,
lives on in the circle of younger trees
you can tell if…
When exploring the woods you move slow,
quiet and look with your heart.