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 can still remember quite clearly the first time I ever saw this place. I went with Daddy. We weren’t married yet. I met all of his family here. They had come together from all over the country to meet up on this island in New Jersey. For generations, Daddy’s family has been congregating in this magical place each Summer. I didn’t know then that daddy and I would one day be married and that we would have a family of our own to bring here every year. I hoped we would. But the future was so blurry back then. While it isn’t crystal clear even now, I do imagine it looking like this for many more years to come. And that causes my soul to soar.
