We have a beautiful mother
Her hills are buffaloes; Her buffaloes hills.
We have a beautiful mother
Her oceans are wombs; Her wombs oceans.
We have a beautiful mother
Her teeth the white stones at the edge of the water;
The summer grasses her plentiful hair.
We have a beautiful mother
Her green lap immense
Her brown embrace eternal
Her blue body everything we know.
~Alice Walker
🌎
🌎❤️
‘Every time I meet a tree, if I am truly awake, I stand in awe before it. I listen to its voice, a silent sermon moving me to the depths, touching my heart, and stirring up within my soul a yearning to give my all.’
~ Mary Webb
Image: Live Oak
by Nancy Lankston
“There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches perfection. No living creature, not even human, has achieved, in the centre of one’s sphere, what the bee has achieved on her own: and if intelligence from another world were to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation, I would offer the humble comb of honey.”
~Maurice Maeterlinck,
The Life Of The Bee, 1924
“You know why trees smell the way they do?” Murphy asked, looking up from her hammering.
“Sap?” Logan guessed. “Chlorophyll?”
Murphy shook her head. “Stars. Trees breathe in starlight year after year, and it goes deep into their bones. So when you cut a tree open, you smell a hundred years’ worth of light. Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth. That’s why trees smell so beautiful and old.”
~Frances O’Roark Dowell
‘Where I’d Like To Be’
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Photo by Ryan Hutton on Unsplash
“When you have an intense contact of love with nature or another human being , like a spark , then you understand that there is no time and that everything is eternal …”
~Paul Coelho
Image by Nancy Lankston
And if today we speak at all,
let us speak in golden leaf.
Let’s converse in low clear stream,
whisper in rose-hip pink.
And if we speak at all today,
let’s slip mulch between each word,
aware that what we say will grow—
how powerful the words we sow.
And if we speak at all,
let’s speak in mountain, speak in field,
speak only words that lift and heal,
speak only words that lift and heal.
And if we speak,
let’s listen for the quiet in between—
plant tulips bulbs in the silences.
And crocuses. And grace.
And any words with thorns in them,
let’s set them down. Let’s lose them.
And if our words don’t open like sky,
let’s let the sky say everything.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Image: Aspens at Sunset
by Nancy Lankston
I am Wind on Sea,
I am Ocean-wave,
I am Roar of Sea,
I am Stag of Seven Tines,
I am a Hawk on a Cliff,
I am shining tear of the Sun,
I am Fairest among Herbs,
I am Boar for Boldness,
I am Salmon in Pool,
I am a Lake on a Plain,
I am a Hill of Poetry,
I am a Word of Skill,
I am the Point of a Weapon
(that pours forth combat),
I am God who fashions Fire for a Head.
Who knows the secrets of the
Unhewn Dolmen?
Who (but I) announces the Ages of the Moon?
Who (but I) know the place where falleth
the Sunset?
Who calls the Cattle from the House of Tethra?
On whom do the cattle of Tethra smile?
Who is the troop, the god who fashions edges
in a fortress of gangrene?
(I am) a Song on a Spear,
an Enchantments of Wind.
🌎❤️
We are the Earth.
The Earth are We.
Original;
Am gaeth i m-muir,
Am tond trethan,
Am fuaim mara,
Am dam secht ndirend,
Am séig i n-aill,
Am dér gréne,
Am cain lubai,
Am torc ar gail,
Am he i l-lind,
Am loch i m-maig,
Am brí a ndai,
Am bri danae,
Am bri i fodb fras feochtu,Am dé delbas do chind codnu,
Coiche nod gleith clochur slébe?Cia on co tagair aesa éscai?
Cia du i l-laig fuiniud gréne?
Cia beir buar o thig tethrach?
Cia buar tethrach tibi?
Cia dám, cia dé delbas faebru a ndind ailsiu?
Cáinte im gai, cainte gaithe.
Image: Scottish Highlands
by Nancy Lankston
‘Yea, I am one with all I see,
With wind and wave, with pine and palm;
Their very elements in me
Are fused to make me what I am.
Through me their common life-stream flows,
And when I yield this human breath,
In leaf and blossom, bud and rose,
Live on I will….’
~Robert Service