The Way Ember Lingers

 Some things arrive

like deer at the edge of clearing

silent, alert,

never asking for attention

yet impossible to ignore.

There is a kind of quiet

that feels like earth after rain

not empty,

just full beneath the surface.

Where roots stretch unseen

and stories sleep

in the hush of the soil.

The wind does not ask

to be followed.

It simply brushes past

wrist, neck, the hollow of the spine

as if to say,

this place remembers you.

Not with noise,

but like pine remembering snow,

like a hawk remembering sky.

Air moves through me

like it moves through birch branches

flexing, bending,

never breaking.

There are moments

when breath tastes of firelight

not burning,

but warm the way embers linger

in the bones of cedar.

A comfort,

not a call.

And when dusk settles on skin,

it comes like a river

slow, unhurried,

carving no path

but touching everything.

There is no need for footprints.

Only the press of grass,

the shift of wildflowers

leaning toward the unseen.

What lives here

is not possession

but presence

the way foxglove listens

to bees,

or how crows

circle once

before disappearing into cloud.

Even silence hums

with the pulse of wings.

So let the body rest

like a stone warmed by sun.

Let thoughts drift

like herons over marsh

wings wide,

untethered.

Let the elements

remember

what I no longer carry

in words.

Just the wind,

just the earth,

just the knowing

settling in.