Self Portrait
Artwork and poem by george cassidy payne
*Digital photography taken at Ironwood Studios in Springwater, NY (Enhanced using Acrobat Lightroom technology)
All of My Ideas Are Unnatural
I step through the woods
and remember
nothing has a name.
The maple does not call itself maple.
The fern does not introduce itself
or speak of credentials.
There is no property here.
No wealth.
No titles stitched onto collars.
No résumés tucked beneath the bark.
The chickadee is not trying to become
a better chickadee.
No checklists.
No straight lines.
Only the patient conversation
between rhizomes
and what the clouds release.
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No classroom walls.
Yet every leaf knows how to receive the day.
Every mushroom knows how to emerge.
Every fallen tree knows how to become
the soil’s return.
No drugs.
No boredom.
The wind does not scroll.
The creek does not seek elsewhere.
The hawk circles for whole afternoons
without wondering
what comes next.
I arrive carrying a thousand ideas.
Slowly, it occurs to me:
all of my ideas are unnatural.
Not because they are evil.
Not because they are useless.
But because the forest goes on without them.
The birch comes into itself.
The fox disappears into the last light.
And for a moment
I leave no trace.
Not my body.
Only the chatter.
Only the endless sorting.
Until I am standing among what is here.
