Living Tree Poetry

I love the ones who say they don’t know.
I would rather stand with them
than with 1000 sure opinions.

For who do we agree with –
the learned, the longwinded?
Must we each water down our thoughts
until they become something agreeable,
that we might call our common ground
religion?

Khalil Gibran talked about spaces between,
in which the winds of heaven might blow.
Oh, the people who don’t know,
don’t they shine with an uncommon wisdom?

Like they’ve been somewhere,
touched an inkling
of what cannot be transcribed here.

Yes, I love the ones who don’t know.
Those who try to tell us what we must believe,
forget how belief grows ring by ring,
as a trunk widening as it stretches up to heaven.

All belief must be an encompassment of the questions
that arrive without answers.
The questions even,
just an endless invitation.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
March 2021