alt

I thought the earth remembered me,
She took me back so tenderly,
Arranging her dark skirts,
Her pockets full of lichens and seeds.
alt

I Slept as never before;
A stone on the riverbed,
Nothing
Between me and the
White Fire of the Stars But my Thoughts,
And they floated
Light as moths among
The branches of the Perfect Trees.
alt

All night, I heard the small kingdoms
Breathing around me, the
Insects, and the birds who do their
Work in the darkness.
alt

All night I rose and
Fell, as if in water, grappling with a
Luminous doom. **

By morning, I had
Vanished at least a dozen times,
Into
Something better.
~
_"Sleeping In The Forest"**_
by
Mary Oliver
©1978

^{Mary Oliver is a renowned American poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

and has published numerous collections including, New and Selected Poems,

Volume 2 (2005); Thirst: Poems (2006); and, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (2010).

Her poems are simultaneously emotional, revealing, haunting, yet humorous and daring.

She very meaningfully captures otherwise unmentioned or muted aspects of the human experience and speaks in detail about how those interplay with other elements of nature.}