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”.
I have often seen photographers post photos of their children dressed in their finest attire sitting in a field of sunflowers or bluebells and always wondered where these magical fields were. Had I found them, I am quite certain my children would never allow me to dress them up or make them sit still. That just isn’t them or me. Instead, we all delighted in a field of weeds while my children chased butterflies with their fishing nets. Each child dressed for a different season. This is us. And I love it so.
