Waterfalls, Autumn Trees, and Poetry

We need less lifeless work 
and more deliberate leisure. 
Less busyness and more 
poetic idleness. 
Less security and more 
daring ventures.
Fewer possessions and 
more BEING. 

Perhaps it’s time to shake off 
the chains of the industrialized 
world and wander in the 
wilderness of awe and 
beauty. 

An archaic revival is what is needed, 
to awaken, to enliven, to finally 
give in to the soul’s desperate 
cry for freedom.

-- Erik Rittenberry

If you will stay close to nature, 
to its simplicity, to the small things 
hardly noticeable, those things 
can unexpectedly become 
great and immeasurable.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

In the middle of the wood it starts,
Then over the wall and the meadow
And into our ears all day. But it departs—
Sometimes—like a shadow.
There is an instant when it grows
Too weak to climb a solid fence,
And creeps to find a crack. But the wind blows,
Scattering it hence
In whimpering fragments like the leaves
That every autumn drives before.
Then rain again in the hills—and the brook receives
It home with a roar.
From the middle of the wood again,
Over the wall and the meadow,
It comes one day to the minds of waiting men
Like a shadow.

--Mark Van Doren

Nature loves courage. 
You make the commitment 
and nature will respond 
to that commitment by removing 
impossible obstacles. 

Dream the impossible dream 
and the world will not grind 
you under, it will lift you up. 

This is the trick... 
This is the shamanic dance 
in the waterfall. This is how 
magic is done. 

By hurling yourself into the abyss 
and discovering it’s a 
feather bed.

― Terence McKenna

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-- Wendell Berry

The body is like a November birch facing the full moon
And reaching into the cold heavens.
In these trees there is no ambition, no sodden body, no leaves,
Nothing but bare trunks climbing like cold fire!
 
My last walk in the trees has come.  At dawn
I must return to the trapped fields,
To the obedient earth.
The trees shall be reaching all the winter.
 
It is a joy to walk in the bare woods.
The moonlight is not broken by the heavy leaves.
The leaves are down, and touching the soaked earth,
Giving off the odor that partridges love.

-- Robert Bly

When I am among the trees, 
especially the willows and the honey locust, 
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, 
they give off such hints of gladness. 
I would almost say that they save me, and daily. 

I am so distant from the hope of myself, 
in which I have goodness, and discernment, 
and never hurry through the world 
but walk slowly, and bow often. 

Around me the trees stir in their leaves 
and call out, ”Stay awhile.” 
The light flows from their branches. 

And they call again, ”It’s simple,” they say, 
”and you too have come 
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled 
with light, and to shine.”

-- Mary Oliver

He crawls to the edge of the foaming creek
He backs up the slab ledge
He puts a finger in the water
He turns to a trapped pool
Puts both hands in the water
Puts one foot in the pool
Drops pebbles in the pool
He slaps the water surface with both hands
He cries out, rises up and stands
Facing toward the torrent and the mountain
Raises up both hands and shouts three times!

-- Gary Snyder

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

--Robert Frost