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.
“Under the Purple Clouds”
we got a late start. the sun had nearly set as we approached the mountains. but there was just enough light left. there is always just enough. enough light to show us those clouds. i exclaimed, “look kids! look at the mountains! they are nearly hidden within the clouds. isn’t it beautiful?!” no one heard me. the iPad was turned on. i would accept your distraction for another forty minutes. and then we would arrive at our destination. the iPad would then be shut down. you wouldn’t need it anymore. instead, you would run and play in that open field behind the creek house. you would make fairy houses by the shed. you would strip down to just your underwear and wade in the cool waters of the creek. you would collect stones by the water’s edge. you would present me with beautiful bouquets of dried up leaves. you would climb rocks. you would fall and scrape your skin. but daddy and i would be there. completely tuned into you. ready to kiss away your hurts. we would turn off our grown up devices too so that we could be fully present. so that we could feel the magic that surrounds us too. so we could hideaway under the purple clouds.
