The forest breathes – calm, lilting waves of air, pushing through its green.

Little clusters of green; little clusters of olive; what are your names, O shades of green?

It rises as the wind passes through and rests before it is taken up again.

And I, standing to watch

Share in this movement of the air through the trees around me and I take some into my body:

I breathe.

Calm, lilting waves of air pushing through my chest,

my lungs filling me up and giving me cool, new, life.

And I give back to the air what it has given to me – a different kind of air that dissipates, dissolves into the night.

And around me, the forest breathes.

An ancient air.

An air as new as it is ancient.

A breeze that has passed along the strands of time.

Timeless, ageless. But never old.

Fresh, life-giving, never-changing; Timeless, ageless.

But never old.

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Cover image by Luis del Río from Pexels. The copyright of The Forest Breathes belongs to Debbie YM Loh.