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| Source (Muir Woods) |
How to celebrate you, my forest, my tree trunks,
branches and leaves? Does my entering you suffice?
Is taking time to absorb your grace enough?
You surely enter me through eyes and nose and
heart,
you pierce me with pleasure and more—with love
arrows.
You ask me to absorb you as I move forward,
drawn
by one detail after another. I opened the cover,
you say, now stay and read the book, leaf after
leaf.
I’ll try to swallow you, body to body, one
mutual celebration, you giving more than you
get,
ancient ones, as usual. I know.
I feel it.
This is how we celebrate, bark to skin, gentle
kisses as we brush, fern to thigh, standing quiet
to breathe and sniff, sap to blood, and vein to
vein.
My blog poems are rough drafts.
Please respect my copyright.
© 2017 Susan L. Chast
Wow....what a be poem!!
ReplyDeleteI love, love, love this forest bathing poem!! Inhaling, absorbing, soaking in the tree souls: "sap to blood, and vein to vein." We all need to celebrate these amazing sentient beings with awe and reverence.
ReplyDeleteHow shall we take it all in? It's a difficult task.
ReplyDeleteBy staying long enough to read the book leaf by leaf, means to take the time to really savor. Is it enough just to be there? Maybe sometimes. Sometimes I just need to inhale cleaner air. But full immersion, it helps me to get back to center.
ReplyDeleteYour shinrin-yoku celebration is truly beautiful. You get in there melt and become a part of the scene. Your communion so beautifully shared
ReplyDelete"Is taking time to absorb your grace enough?"
My favourite line
Much💖love
love the forest setting....so close to nature...deeply touching..cool
ReplyDeleteThe poem beautifully highlights the value of forests and social relationship with humankind...
ReplyDelete"through eyes and nose and heart,
you pierce me with pleasure and more—with love arrows"- Aah...You have amazing ways of describing things! Lovely....
I love this immersion into the magic forest. Especially love the invitation to stay and read the whole book. Beautiful, Susan.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your celebration of nature / the forest in this poem. So much to 'absorb' in your words!
ReplyDeleteI have always been beguiled by the whispering of the forest right from when as a child I was able to explore the one close to home. It is such a beautiful place to unwind, sit back quietly against a tree and see and hear the place come alive. Your poem is really beautiful Susan.
ReplyDeleteI am a forest bather...Japanese: Shinrin-yoku ...I climb trees and sit in a special place and play my violin for them (and me). I love this immersion into the forest. I love the staying to read the book - like a temple or a church.
ReplyDeletebark to skin, fern to thigh, sap to blood... oh wow Susan..that is just the perfect consummation of our love for nature!
ReplyDeleteI love that in the celebration, the speaker and forest dance as one... So much love.
ReplyDeleteForests are like cathedrals...spiritual and holy places.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful and surreal piece, Susan. The coming together of the speaker and nature is most admirable.
ReplyDeleteIs there, I wonder, such a thing as an insufficient celebration? Isn't even the tiniest celebration welcomed by the universe?
ReplyDeleteOh how wonderful that was! I was right there with you breathing in the forest as deep as I could
ReplyDeleteReally lovely.
ReplyDelete