Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver
I thought the earth remembered me,
She took me back so tenderly
Arranging her skirts
Her pockets full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before
A stone on the riverbed,
Nothing between me and the white fire of the stars,
But my thoughts.
And they floated light as moths
Among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
Breathing around me.
The insects and the birds
Who do their work in darkness.
All night I rose and fell,
As if water, grappling with luminous doom.
By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times
Into something better.
We as a group of artist mothers from all over the world are making it our priority to turn off the tv/video games so that we can give our children the sacred experience to connect with the fast disappearing natural world. We will freelens our adventures into the wild and share them through this monthly project. The goal of this collaborative is to journey “Into Something Better”
Summer is winding down. I am not ready. There is less pain in summer, more promise. I am a person who needs that sun on my skin, craves it. Every winter I think about summer and all of the things I will do and how I will jam-pack it with trips to the river every day. Well, it never happens, because life happens - but we go when we can.
Now the evenings are a bit cool for swimming, but the water is also low and gentle, and perfect for exploring bared rocks and their fossils and secrets. The river is not the same as it is in July, when the air is crackling with heat, the water tepid but still refreshing. But it's still there, still lazily carrying on. It knows summer isn't over quite yet.
And with the winding down of summer comes that gorgeous late-summer orange light, fifteen minutes before sunset. Then comes September when we see the first frost and the sparkling of it all takes our breaths away. October with its skies so blue they hardly look real, and then November, with its light milky as weak tea. I have things to look forward to. I don't like the routine of the fall, the re-introduction to germs, the long days and tired children and evenings spent packing backpacks, the dark that seems to creep in ten minutes earlier every day, the chill that goes right through to the bone.
But there's always beautiful light and that illuminates a whole lot of wonderful things.
Next up in our circle is the wonderful Cindy Cavanagh. Click below to see what beauty she captured this month.
