Encounter with the soul

I do not know

what the soul is.

If it is a white light

emanating from my center

or a ghostly mist encompassing my body.

Nor do I know

if we must always be in contact,

my soul and I.

I do not think I have sat nearly long enough

in the woods

or by the stream

to know much

about my soul at all, really.

But as I was walking

among the aspens yesterday—

their robes golden

and rustling on the forest floor,

their bare bone trunks

peering back at me

with their doe-like eyes,

a breeze swept over us—

the aspens and I,

sending the crinkled leaves tumbling,

my heart thundering

and I looked up to see

what had to be

my soul

bursting up into the clear blue stage of the sky

to dance among the last golden leaves of autumn.

My heart opened then opened again

as the breeze lifted my soul up higher into the air

then brought it spinning down

in a shower of gold and light and leaf.

I knelt down to the forest floor

to scoop it up—

broken open and giddy

but only found gilded leaves skittering around me

On the cool, ancient clay.