Because to appreciate
the natural world is to lament its swift decline
over the last
hundred years or so, on miraculous water
I not only walk,
but also stand still.

What am I saying?
Rain is still until it falls, I tell myself, as if
pressing a depreciated
leaf—mint or maple—branched off from an expired,
but not tired,
plant or tree—between two fingers, mine,
or my other hand’s.

Rain is
still until I listen
to it drinking from the roots of the tender young shoots,
but not tendrils,
of an elongated plant, or a minute tree, testing,
but not tasting,
the dead air, and falling and falling through it,
and adding,

all around me, nothing
new. Now I fathom all I can rely on when I rely on
the slow, so
slow, almost time-lapsed, natural world.
When, unlike the world,
I run and stand still.

– Douglas Nordfors