On the left side of the field of flowers from where stands my house is a lovely tree that took root overnight. I awoke to its presence one day while it swayed in the soft morning breeze and it felt, for all the world, as if it had been there forever.
So I ask myself: is the feeling more important than the sight? Perhaps my eyes are slow to bring to vision what is there. Perhaps my eyes are sleeping while great surges of energies take place, moving molecules through time and space to become the event that appears as if out of the blue. What invisible impulse gave it birth?
The tree is real, for I have climbed it. I have sat on its branches, looked out over the field of flowers and felt the bark in all its roughness touch my skin and leave a mark. I have smelled its fragrant blossoms in the spring and tasted its luscious fruit when the world had turned very warm.
Why did the tree come to live with me? Who is this voiceless creature of such beauty and why are we able to delight in one another? Who is a tree? I ask softly because I am afraid to be answered. I live now in a world where real questions are never asked. I’ve been made to be silly for asking them. Still, the person I am wonders about a lot of things never thought important. I sense my sanity depends on keeping my wonderment alive.
Gathered in my pockets are the questions of all my hopes and dreams. I know, I know, that life is not mysterious. The mystery is that my fellow beings do not search their pockets for the treasure of questions waiting there. The answer comes as a question, after all.