Poem

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves
of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

There is a symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds,
the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature, the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.

-Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

Even Trees Awake to a Breakfast of Light

Even trees awake to a breakfast of light.
In hungry excitement they elevate their leaves,
Great green choirs with ten thousand open mouths,
Hosanna-ing the sun from silent boughs.
Trees know glory with neither sound nor sight,
Yet spread their limbs with phototropic ease.

No one knows the inwardness of trees;
Imagination, though, rapport allows:
Nor sickness, fire, drought, nor age, nor blight
Erodes their silent worship of delight.

4-19-2006 Quote for today

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
-E. E. Cummings

Poem

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you,
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill,
Don’t go back to sleep.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
-Rumi

4-4-2006 Quote for today

If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.
-Hal Borland

4-2-2006 Quote for today

Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.
-Gerard De Nerval

Trees - Joyce Kilmer

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.