Forest Bathing for Wellbeing

In fact, the trees are murmuring under your feet,
a buried empathy; you tread it.
                                                  High over your head,
the canopy sieves light; a conversation
you lip-read. The forest
                                       keeps different time;
slow hours as long as your life,
so you feel human.

So you feel more human; persuaded what you are
by wordless breath of wood, reason in resin.
You might name them-
                                     oak, ash, holly, beech, elm-
but the giants are silence alive, superior,
and now you are all instinct;
swinging the small lamp of your heart
as you venture their world:

the green, shadowy, garlic air                                                 your ancestors breathed.Ah, you thought love human till you lost yourself in the forest, but it is more strange.                                    These grave and patient saints who pray and pray and suffer your little embrace. 

Carol Ann Duffy
Copyright © Carol Ann Duffy, 2019