nature

Deep calleth unto deep

great mysterious
multitudinous
voice of the sea —

a composite of all
sounds of the world
brought down
by all the rivers
in their courses
through the lands —

all the sounds
the earth utters
to the heavens
in its daily life —

the tinkle and drip
of pellucid springs
hidden deep in
remote hill countries —

the rattling laughter
of summer streams
with rustling leaves
and piping birds —

the deep whisper
of the woods and
the boom and roar
as they wrestle
with the winds —

the crash of waterfalls
echoes of mountains
the rush of storms and
roll and peal of thunder —

the merry shouts
of playing children
commingled murmurs
of manifold labor and
brooding world-spirit —

the clatter and
grinding of mills
the tumultuous
straining voices
of busy towns —

the world-embracing sea
has taken in and blended
and harmonized all these
into its own eternal call —

as you, child of the world
sit there and listen
your own comes back
to you in that mighty voice —

deep calling unto deep
the soul of the sea
to the soul of the man —

—Rev. James H. Ecob, D.D. (1844–1921), from “The Call of the Universe,” Psalm 42:7 sermon, 1904, poetically abridged by Terri Guillemets, 2023

_____________________________
Ecob began his sermon: “I have long wanted some one whose soul hears, to write a poem on this subject, the call of the sea.” The good reverend already had the contents of the poem right there in his prose; I simply set it free for him and sincerely hope that the new creation is to his liking. —tg

XXXI

My stiff-spread arms
Break into sudden gesture;
My feet seize upon the rhythm;
My hands drag it upwards:
Thus I create the dance.

I drink of the red bowl of the sunlight:
I swim through seas of rain:
I dig my toes into earth:
I taste the smack of the wind:
I am myself:
I live.

The temples of the gods are forgotten or in ruins:
Professors are still arguing about the past and the future:
I am sick of reading marginal notes on life,
I am weary of following false banners:
I desire nothing more intensely or completely than this present;
There is nothing about me you are more likely to notice than my being:
Let me therefore rejoice silently,
A golden butterfly glancing against an unflecked wall.

—John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), Irradiations, 1915

Stoic

I searched the history of grass,
Beneath hawk-shadows blowing past.

I learned the timelessness of stone;
Saw forest-flesh and forest-bone
Reach briefly up, go swiftly down,
Crash in green, dissolve to brown.

Taught by decay and schooled by molder,
I can turn a stoic shoulder
To beauty spiking searching eyes
And breasts defenselessly unwise.

Against impermanence I lock
My soul, confiding it to rock.

—Frances M. Frost (1905–1959), “Stoic,” Hemlock Wall, 1929

I Vowed that I Would Be a Tree

I vowed that I would be a tree.
      I went up to an oak and said,
“What shall I do that I might be
A beech, an oak, or any tree,
      With branches leafing from my head?”

There was a sound of sap that ran,
      There was a wind of leaves that spoke.
“So you would cease to be a man,
And be a green tree, if you can,
      A pine, a beech, an oak?”

I answered, “I am tired of men,
      As tired as they of me.
I fain would not return again
To the perplexity of men,
      But straightway be a tree.”

There was a sound of winds that went
      To summon every oldest tree,
To hold their austere Parliament
About the thing had craved to be
      Elect of their calm company.

There was a sound of bursting tide,
      There was a wash of clanging foam,
A crumbling shore, a bursting tide.
There came a thunder that outcried,
      “Go, wretched mortal, get thee home!

“Who art thou that would be a tree,
      Least of the weeds that shoot and pass?
Bide till a Wisdom come, and see
Before a mortal be a tree,
      He first must be a blade of grass!”

—Louis Golding (1895–1958), Sorrow of War, 1919

Rippling

in nature i am
water in the breeze
going with the flow

in society i thrash
every cell halting
resistance grows
i become boulder
thrown off cliffs
accelerating through
no choice of my own
landing hard
splitting open
shattering into
everything wrong

—Terri Guillemets

March Night

I shook off the house like a hooded cape,
And came out, free, into the March-blown street…
At a lash of the gale, at a sight of the cloud-tattered skies,
As a coat discarded,
I shook off civilization
And became wild,
And my naked soul raced the clouds,
And the flavor of the Earth was fresh and primitive…

—James Oppenheim (1882–1932), War and Laughter, 1916

Desiccated

I write of only 3%
of the landscape
around me —
the green trees
colorful flowers
amazingly adaptive
dryland wildlife
and blind myself
to the rest of it —

but it’s time
to take a good look
and acknowledge
my selective seeing —
the 97% is dull
barren, stark, harsh, hot

out my bedroom window
there is a plain brown
block walled fence, my
neighbor’s white-metal
shed roof, off of which
glares the sun so brightly
it’s blinding, not a speck
of green in sight, except
one small weed emerging
from dusty gray rocks —

yes, there is a lizard
on the wall, doing push-ups
in the morning sun
and I watch him
with fascination
awed with nature
I forget the surrounding
urban desert ugliness —

until suddenly I wonder
where will he get
his next water?
surely from someone’s
yard watering system
but where do we  get
that precious water
for our thirsty homes?
and how much longer
will we be fortunate
enough to have it?

our city and county
allow so much over-
development, it feels
as if they are slowly
killing us, overcrowding
us, not caring about
our quality of life
nor the lizard’s —

but maybe, just maybe
we Phoenicians are
simply outright foolish
for trying to live here
in our air-conditioned
fortresses while the
city dries up around us

—Terri Guillemets

Wilderness pathways

“The wilderness has the power to exert enormous influence on the mind of a man freshly arrived from civilization, especially if he lives alone and has but little contact with other people; some that I have known could not take the solitude, the absence of comfort and reassurance offered by the presence of other humans.

Such men have become effete in terms of personal survival in the face of natural challenges, the city is too much with them, and they don’t last. There are also those who go too far the other way, becoming misanthropes… these are the withdrawers, and they are found sprinkled loosely wherever there is a forest or a jungle, like seeds that have lost the ability to germinate in cultivated soil.

But between the quitters and the lone stayers, there is a third kind — indeed, there may be more than that, for all I know — in whom the wilderness acts as a catalyst and who, after they have experienced both the wild and the civilized, begin to form new values, to explore unknown pathways, and to realize that nature is an endlessly patient teacher with an infinite capacity to stimulate thought and to sharpen the hunger for knowledge. That is how the wilderness affected me…”

—R. D. Lawrence (1921–2003), The North Runner, 1979