“Sit ‘still,’ for a moment,”
my favorite forestkeeper said,
his brushy eyebrows making the air quotes.
“The earth is already circling the sun
at 67,000 miles per hour.”
He’d tacked a sign at the trailhead
where trees open to a cathedral arch of invitation:
“Welcome to the silence of the woods.”
Redundant, really. But we need
reminders. I need the koan:
you call this silence?
A hermit thrush’s tone holds its own reverb,
an echo of the depth
of her winter rainforest home.
I once heard his tin whistle emerge
as notes in the bird chorus,
unsure such harmony were human.
—
Haiku translator Harry Behn told Karina Lutz as a child to “write from experience.” So she gathered experience: as an environmental activist; editor, reporter, and magazine publisher; professor, yoga teacher, and workshop facilitator; farmer, carpenter, and seamstress. She helped secure passage of sustainable energy legislation, thwart a proposed megaport, launch a green power nonprofit, and startup a permaculture cooperative. Her poems are widely published, including her books Post-Catholic Midrashim and Preliminary Visions.
