Sands of Time (& Us) - rec by @DEARDOVESWINGS : STARING AT THE GRAINS OF SAND AND FEELING A LITTLE LIKE THEM SOMETIMES

 

Crushed shells and stone and bones once warm
Sands are past made small and slight
Each grain once lived or braved the storm
Erosion by time, still touched by light

Will I, too, crumble down someday
Become the dust beneath a tread?
Not gone, just shaped another way
A coarse amidst the chorus dead

(Fleck of me rides breeze,
Maybe laid near ocean's shore,
Or chafing an ass.)

Deardoveswing's profile: https://www.pi.fyi/u/deardoveswings

-- Sometimes I feel like I'm scattered too, sprawled out in every which way. Other times I feel like I've been ground down, but that I've changed and I'm still here, like everyone else ever. Maybe when the human race is extinct we'll find each other again in bits of dirt and sand or somethin'. A piece of me might wind up mingling with a piece of you, or like, irritating the evolved asscheeks of some future creature. 

-- “In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.” - Rachel Carson

-- "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere" - Anakin Skywalker

(I am at all times both of these quotes)

Befriending the trees near you - rec by @MOSSYELFIE

I touch my hand to another's skin,
A weathered bark that draws me in.
These living tomes of years, of strain.
Of sunlight, cold, and nature's reign.

They do not speak in words I know,
I feel them through the sways of bough.
Their leaves drift loose from time, erases,
While mossy grins grow on ancient faces.

Above, the Eastern Whipbirds cry,
Dappling pointed songs across the sky.
Each note held close by forest's floor,
Sung to trees who've heard before.

As I stand in their calming shade,
I think of homes the branches made.
Of critters curled in roots below,
And owls who watch the moonlight glow.

These pillars who hold more life than me,
They've watched us all pass silently.
Just to be among these sacred things,
I sense my name within their rings. 

 
Mossyelfie's profile: https://www.pi.fyi/u/mossyelfie 

--There's a lot of calming memories I have of our tree friends, 'specially as a kid. But sometimes when I try to meditate, I think of the feeling of a specific memory I have of walking through the bush on a school camp trip in Year 8. I'd hated almost everything about that trip except the walks we'd go on (also the unironic awful physiological and psychological trials and tribulations of being a tween to contend with). 

The rustles of leaves, the forest's scents, the wind that hit my skin being carved by the trees' steadfast paths in place, the scuffs of so many boots stopping to hear the calls of Eastern Whipbirds (plus what I now reckon were Grey Shrike Thrushes too), taking a breath in the shade of the trees from the Aussie Summer heat to just be. It was like all the uncomfortableness I'd felt never existed in the first place, and I couldn't feel the sweat on and of me. 

-- Eastern Whipbirds:
https://youtu.be/Bf9GVLuFo1Y?si=qUsOzqPr38Xwsi58&t=11