Trees: Akin Bailey
Author’s note:
This poem is intended as a reflection on our fallenness as humans, specifically with regards to creation. It is meant to explore the relationship between God’s creation in nature and ourselves, and how damage to one will harm the other. It ends with a hopeful plea that we may one day learn to care for the earth as God bid us, and in doing so inhabit our true selves in Him.
Like us at first.
Playful and clean.
Deep, rich, dark.
A potential unnamed.
Unexplored and unfathomable.
Suddenly a seed was planted and we dreamt.
Thoughts formed and took shape.
Took root.
Those roots stretched out and reached deep.
The very beginning of beginnings.
Suddenly we are. A self must be here. The search begins.
Leaving behind the good things we know for something better.
Better? It must be better.
In searching we fail to see the grass.
The branches that reach for us, the leaves calling as they wave.
And the wind.
Whispering softly in our ears we continue to ignore our siblings.
The good green things of the earth as they grow beside us and teach us how to be.
Reminding us of life.
Inside ourselves we think instead. Calculate. Connive. Evaluate.
We decide that the answer, instead of looking back to see how things were and ought to be.
Will be found by going and going faster.
In experiencing more.
The more and more that takes no thought of enough.
Meanwhile the birds nest in the vast branches of our forgotten brethren.
The squirrels attend to their dreys in the nooks of sturdy arms.
And the waters - Oh! the waters!
Gathered from deep places the land is their shepherd.
Twisting and carving and making it new.
Drawing all things in.
One day we will know the water.
We’ll remember the trees and hear - finally hear the wind.
Laying down our roots we’ll learn that the sun is our friend.
We will walk on the grass and smile.
We’ll be taught.
Taught to reach and spread and know and stay.
If we let it, the wind will teach us to breathe.
And the land will teach us to rest.
Akin Bailey is a graduate of LA Tech and currently serves as a Missionary Intern at the Wesley. He enjoys wandering around the woods, cooking good food, spending time with his fiancée Camellia, and reading books. He is a joy, a delight, a faithful servant and disciple of Jesus, and an indescribable blessing to our community.