A few days back, my class went on a nature walk. I sat in the crook of an oak tree while the students sketched in the sunshine. I looked at the ridges of bark and could hardly believe that they were just as they were and not any other way, and that I was there to see it. There’s this stanza of Who? by Czeslaw Milosz:
Be yourselves, things of this earth, be yourselves!
Don’t rely on us, on our breath,
On the fancies of our treacherous and avid eye.
We long for you, for your essence,
For you to last as you are in yourselves:
Pure, not looked at by anybody.
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CC image courtesy of jamesconradshea on Flickr.