The lemon tree by the back door is continuously in process of producing lemons. I see the buds and flowers waiting for the bees, the next installment in process, as the current crop awaits my plucking touch.

Of course the tree knows, as the lemons know, that falling to the ground, rotting in decay, the waiting seeds hold within themselves their destiny. To grow a tree. The perpetuation of life.

Like all trees that bear fruit, the knowledge is the same. The sweet fruit is an enhancement of the design. The tree knows, in its mastery of biochemistry, the secret of sugar, the fruitification of glucose, an envelope of fructose to envelop the seeds.

The seeds know too their destiny, to attract as fruit a roving beast, to be consumed, pass through digestion, their hard shells protecting the inner seed from the ravages of stomach acid in the digestive tract, then to be excreted in the midst of scat, upon a more fertile ground, far enough away from the mother tree so as not to crowd, until the rains should come and wash the nutrient waste into the soil, the intelligent seed putting forth a tendril down because it knows that’s where the earth is to sustain the root, then a tendril upward because the seed knows that’s where the sun is.

I pass by somewhat later and see an anchored sprout.

I pass by somewhat later and see the sprout develop a leaf, then leaves, which know the secret of photosynthesis, like solar panels we poor humans have developed to produce energy.

I pass by sometime later and see the sprout become a sapling.

I pass by somewhat later and see a tree.

O Nature, let me live with you in harmony. Teach me the secret of survival so we may endure together forever.

Take me into your universe, O Tree.

Amen.