The Wonders of Nature

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry. ~Muriel Rukeyser


There was a time in my writing life, early in my attempts to make sense out of life by putting thoughts to paper that I dabbled in poetry. It was a time when I was lost as an individual flitting about trying to make sense of life. I possibly would have floated away into oblivion had it not been for the anchoring effect, the stabilizing effect my children brought into my life. The poem below, written in the late 1980s, was the result of their influence of my life.









The Wonders of Nature




I took you to the woods to show you the wonders of nature


We strolled together down dirt path
I had to walk slow because you kept stopping to put
Stones in your pockets and collect sticks


I showed you a high flying bird
You were examining a pile of plucked cedar waxwing feathers,
Holding the pink tipped and yellow fringed ones in separate hands


I showed you the leaves in the trees
You were tracing the red veins of a discarded maple leaf
With your slender, tanned fingers


I showed you a deeply furrowed tree trunk
You were petting a black and yellow spider
Hidden in the valleys of the bark


I showed you a squirrel
You were busy collecting acorns
Saving the capped ones in the pock of your jeans


I showed you a mushroom at the base of a tree
You placed your nose next to the mushroom
And partook of it's earthy aroma


I showed you a river
You were lost in the lakes
Formed in the knotholes of a beaten wooden fence


I took you to the woods and you showed me the wonders of nature