ook", whispered my half brother the very moment we stepped into the hush of the Rainforest. "I found a Lizard we can catch!"so I knelt myself before the thicket to which he was pointing, and peered down alongside it to spot the tiniest little Lizard I'd ever seen in my life; way too small in fact for my twist of grass to ensnare.
My half-brother just frowned, and scratched his four year old head in confusion when I related the news. "Why?" he asked me.
I did my best to explain the mechanics of my trap. But he seemed as confused as a tiny lizard watching a grown man comb through all the scented foliage, for God knows what."I know why" - he asserted with a confidence that seemed distinctly complete. "It's because the little lizards aren't important!"
So I wrested a twig from the rich black of the jungle earth, and tried to demonstrate it physically. But to no avail.
The question "Why" - like a long blade of grass with a small eyelet tied on one end - had ensnared something within him. And he wriggled hard to shake himself free.
The question "Why" - like a long blade of grass with a small eyelet tied on one end - had ensnared something within him. And he wriggled hard to shake himself free.
But as the new season's tree saplings stretched themselves sunward from the Rainforest bed, his face came alight with new realization.
"I know! I know!" he exclaimed excitedly. "It's because the little Lizards don't exist!!"
His words came crashing down in my awareness like a tree-branch that had cracked and fallen from some impossible height at the very peak of the forest canopy.
And just when his words found their resting place alongside the silent pool of my reflections, the sound of a scampering baby lizard caught my attention, and I turned to glimpse its shadow from behind a sunlit palm leaf.
And just when his words found their resting place alongside the silent pool of my reflections, the sound of a scampering baby lizard caught my attention, and I turned to glimpse its shadow from behind a sunlit palm leaf.
"You're little as a tiny lizard, and you exist", I said to him. "You're important. To me."
He ceased wracking his brains for an
answer. He even stopped looking for a lizard to
catch. Instead, he just sat himself atop a nearby rock, and stared off into some silent sunless place within. And perhaps when he felt that he was sitting in the safest Rain Forest in all of Puerto Rico, he moved to surrender his secret to the very presence that formed the living stillness of the Rainforest.
"I wanted to go to Daddy's burial service yesterday, but they wouldn't let me. They said I was too little."
Amid the giant Rain Forest plants whose green translucent leaves dwarfed the pair of us - his soul's questions reverberated.
How did the grief in my heart come to weigh so little in the eyes of my loved ones? Have I no relational existence?
The Ancient Rainforest, with all of her sentient greenery and all of her keen eyed, seeing creatures said nothing. She simply received him - exactly as he was - into the beating heart of the living earth.
I was only a witness. I'd come to trap an innocent forest spirit, when perhaps - as my Ancient Taino ancestors might have once observed - the Rainforest drew us there to let one go.
copyright 2012,2013, 2014 Whispering Bird
All photos courtesy of istockphoto.com. Top to bottom.
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1 comment:
Thank you, your story has touched my heart. As I read, I was unsure where your writing would go, which brought in my attention. Also, with the first answer, that the lizard was unimportant, there is another lesson there. From the view of the captor, from the view of one who wishes not to be captured ... sometimes it is good to be unimportant.
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