Waiting and Listening

I'm missing things. At this vertiginous rim, all things gather. All things speak. But only if I wait. They told me in outdoor school that it takes twenty minutes. That sounds about right. Twenty minutes of sitting quietly before the forest begins to forget you're there, and the birds and animals move and speak again.

Like a thin line of light falling through the blinds into a dark room, catching dust-motes and bringing in the faint noise of traffic.

I wonder what the wood felt like to Sir Walter Raleigh, when he laid his bearded cheek against the block and waited for the axe. The last thing to speak to him in this world. Was his mind still full of what might have come of the Orinoco expeditions and the malice of the Spanish ambassador, or was he listening, at the last?