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Posts Tagged ‘symbiosis’

On Peace

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 28, 2025| 5 Comments »


 
All of humanity’s difficulties stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
                  —Blaise Pascal, Pensées (first published in 1670)
 
 
Let me learn this quiet art
of being still in a room alone.
There is so much I cannot do
to help the world,
but this—
let me learn to metabolize
silence as the alga in lichen
metabolizes light. Let me learn
to root and grow
in the sparest of places
as the fungus of lichen attaches
to the barest of rocks.
Let me learn to let the vastly different
kingdoms of myself serve each other
instead of warring,
the way alga and fungus
live together in lichen,
a symbiosis so stable we see
the two as one. This is how
I come to believe it is possible.
I have been sitting with lichen.
The quietest of sermons.
I cannot stop listening.

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