Belonging

You love this place
but like a stranger;
as if you are intruding
on the earth’s great peace.
It’s one thing to be reverent,
another to live on bent knee.

Do not apologise,
as if your presence diminishes the space.
You belong to it
as the stones belong to the creek,
the ferns to the fallen beech,
the epiphytes to air.

We are all ephemera,
all essential,
on this land and of it.
For whatever time we have here,
we belong.