nature deficit disorder

reordered by nature

much of humanity lives increasingly distanced

from forest, from sea, from animals we don’t own,

we love to make a world to live in

that is full of right angles, of boxes, of devices,

of foods and entertainment servile to us,

a world in which we are alpha

and we feel all exists only

in how they connect to our world,

yesterday we hiked up a great mountain 

in a great national park,

Mt. LeConte in the Smokies,

two peregrine falcons called loudly

and soared above the steep ridges,

where some humans some 20 years ago 

helped them to refind a home,

these falcons are not domesticated,

they are their own selves,

and yet something deep within us needs them to exist,

as if unbridled nature allows our souls to lose their bridles,

the forest on this mountain is a wild menagerie

which lives stories of success and failure,

of competition and cooperation,

of obligations and reciprocities,

al held within communities 

about 10,000 years old, this time around,

but really stretching into billions of fertile years,

what we are finally learning is that the forest

is a community, a community of diversity,

of a wholeness we humans struggle to achieve,

of a rightness to every flower, every tree, every leaf, every heart,

we need nature to hep us remember fundamental reality,

the truth beneath our feet, before our eyes, above our presumption,

there exists a nature deficit disorder;  for our health

we need to order ourselves by letting nature swallow us:

so much depends on a great beech tree, 

a moss-wrapped spruce,

a foraging bear, 

the sun on the horizon,

a waterfall dancing with our souls.

by Henry H. Walker

June 18, ‘21