It's Still Life

Beech (in Six Movements)

I.
under a beech tree
look up and understand
why forests are shrines

beneath its green roof,
you are never small.
you are welcomed.

II.
before bells marked hours,
before churches reached every village,
people looked to places
where the world breathed deeply.

a tree was enough.

standing beneath its green,
you do not feel small.
you feel remembered,
as though Earth itself
still knew your name.

III.
before there were walls
to hold the sacred,

there were trees.

some, still standing,
older than the memory
of any footfall,

keeping a silence
that asks nothing of us
except that we listen.

IV.
sanctuaries
with no doors.

a canopy of leaves,
a pillar of living,
the quiet certainty

that something older than memory
was already there,
waiting

for you.

V.
he stands beneath the beech
as one old soul
greets another.

the tree says nothing.

it has always known
how to welcome those
who arrive quietly.

VI.
may every old tree
find someone to stand with
without needing to own it,
measure it,
or explain it.

may every traveller
find,
at least once,
a place older than memory
where silence
feels like welcome.

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Everywhere Poems don’t have a subject. They have a starting point and follow wherever attention leads. It’s — go for a walk and see where you end up.

Photo taken in southern Sweden ©Misky 2006-2026.