to be part of nature

Forest and Sky

the storm we named Michael

comes through here with four inches of rain,

and, as it moves away,

winds roar behind it,

sheeting bands of rain into gray-outs,

and whipping the trees out the south window

like some pom-poms in a frenzy of team enthusiasm,

the power goes out, for somewhere between us and its source,

the lines come down and the system needs a break,

thuds upon the roof,

flurries of jettisoned leaves and cones and bits of branch

give up the air to clutter the ground,

one crash after the power had gone out

turns out to be two big oak branches

who rip our power lines from our house,

as the world around me is drenched and then tested in the wind,

I read along in The Overstory by Richard Powers,

he writes of the story of Patricia Wetherford

as she opens herself to the nonhuman world which is our mother,

as she opens herself to asking questions of nature,

and then to actually hear the answers,

even more extraordinary, 

she then shares the answers with people

who do not want to hear,

who do not want to knows truths

that makes us a part of the whole,

where we are not full in and of ourselves,

certainly not master, despite what Genesis proclaims,

here in the East, forest is triumphant between us and sky,

I wonder about humans and the sky:

the Greeks named the male primal God as Uranus, the heavens,

how much do we clear the trees 

to release ourselves up into the heavens

so that we are dominated?

I suggest that we need the primal female Gaia,

who, with the forest, holds us in her arms,

arms that touch the sky and become one 

with its power, through its power,

we should never choose either sky or woods,

rather, we should live the truth of both.

by Henry H. Walker

October 11, ‘18