Press Play

Press play

In pine trees, playing with the wind like the butterflies’ wings

Press pause

With water, splashing through limestone like a chisel through wood

Press stop

On moss licking forests' branches, billowing from years of silence

Rewind

To the girl taking videos of the butterflies beneath the pines

Your camera’s resolution can’t hold the hope in her wings, child

Pixels can’t pause the river on the mountainside

To the wide-eyed boy trying to capture the waterfall’s splash before it dies

Can you bear to sit long enough to hear the river’s story

To the girl uploading photos of new hair and flawless skin

No album can immortalize your youthful beauty, darling, are we numbing
Fear of the fleeting world frame by frame

posting pictures of ourselves so we don’t forget who we are today

or maybe we know the self who woke up this morning

is already lost in endless videos, streaming

Press pause

did you see that splash of water on the limestone, it’s running  –

Press stop

Did you see the way the sunset grasped the treetops, it’s fading –

Rewind

What if the light runs out before I’m done dreaming –

Fast forward

Will I forget the way your face shines when you’re laughing –

Press play -

What if you upload your wishes to the wind with me

Stream all your memories in the riverbed with me

Sit long enough above this crashing water with me

Until the sound can carve a canyon in your mind and soul

Will you listen to the river long enough to know

That your chisel is your flowing, shapeless heart

drop by drop, give up your limestone battles

Frame by frame trust the light of the past to our stars

drop by drop let my stories seep
Into your caverns, and yours in mine

Until we’re fluid and broken enough to carve canyons

Trusting our dreams will take their shape

When we loose our own.

To the man whose mind rewinds through years of regret,

The moss-covered forest holds forgiveness in its branches

To the child with fleeting eyes like butterflies, wishing to fast forward

The young pines that wait for roots until the day their needles glimpse the
mountaintops.

To the young woman, worried her map was lost along the trail

Your inner compass has in mind a better view

Press play.

The mountains care little of your mistakes, my friend,

and if the river can keep running

so can you.