When you stand before a colossal wall
of reddish brown
a mass of tree bigger than any you’ve ever seen-
bigger than any living thing,
bigger than houses,
far bigger than ourselves,

It becomes more than
an experience of human and tree.

When you listen to the wind curl through rounded
needle clusters and gaze up 100 feet
to the lowest branch,
awestruck eyes looking towards the sky,
I glance at my wife, her hand resting on soft tree-fur

It becomes more than
an experience of natural wonder.

When you lean against two-foot deep fluted bark,
and a fire-carved cave engulfs you at it’s base –
it is beyond any wildness you’ve ever felt,
beyond any idea of nature you’ve ever known,

It becomes more than
an experience of the wild Sierra.

When you see the ribbed and egg-shaped cone
a seed light as nothing like an oatmeal flake
smaller than the baby in my arms
smaller than seeds of lesser eastern trees,

It becomes more than a moment outside-

Away from the crisis-call of our modern lives,
away from highways and comparing ourselves to
others, away from achievement and failure,

It becomes a sacred moment lost to modern thought-

when you realize these plants were living,
breathing, green flesh at the time of Christ’s birth,
these apostles of creation

What does it become,
you, standing there beside this tree,
a 3,000 year old 40 foot wide Giant Sequoia?

It becomes a greeting with God on earth,
An invitation to wonder
and a chance
to believe.

July 2003

ROSS L. ANDREWS