What is it, to know the value of a thing?

What is it, to crush a bit of western redcedar in your hand and smell everything you’ve been missing, and everything you’ve ever wanted, besides?

One full moon, one unbroken block of time?

A week without anxiety? Your guts like a grandfather clock, time immemorial, This is the way things always should be, this is the way things always should be, or nothing,

The faint taste of rosemary, rainwater, dried figs,

A bunch of lavender gone dusty in a newspaper cone

A single beating, human heart

And you know that something is wrong, you know that things are still, wrong,

But put a handful of western redcedar in a mason jar of water, suspended at the mouth with a crumpled twist-tie

And let it sit for a day and then drink it, and it will taste like six months of rain, like the forest floor, an impossible clearing, like the morning of the world

Is this the morning of the world?

And what is it, to know the value of a thing?