Beneath the Canopy of Full Green

By mid-May, the trees had become lush with leaves. What once had been bare silhouettes were now complete shelters of green. I wandered into the woods, where the sun filtered through in speckled patterns, dappling the path ahead.

I found an old stone bench beneath a maple and sat, watching how the wind played with the leaves above. There was no urgency, no need for great insight – only the soft hush of wind through branches, and the peace of being.

A gentle voice spoke near me. I hadn’t noticed the old man with a walking stick who had arrived quietly on the other side of the bench.

“The leaves are like thoughts,” he said, gazing upward. “So many, fluttering, overlapping. But they all belong to the same tree. The same root.”

I smiled. “And the trunk?”

“The heart-mind,” he answered.

I closed my eyes then and sat with that truth. Let the thoughts come. Let them go. I would stay rooted.