skipping a heartbeat

drawing a breath

a daily intimacy

between life

 and what's next

I can still remember the first time I learned about death,   I was a child and it terrified me.

Ever since then I've been trying to make friends with mortality.  It's not an easy friendship.   But the forest is a good teacher..  it clearly shows life and decay as parts of the same plant.    It seems to me that what's next in the forest.. is life.   Nothing is wasted, every death nurtures life, every time.