Category: Nature Poetry

I have song for myself
that is a song for you.

I have something to say,
something clear and crisp
like water from a mountain spring.

Nothing too wordy, just straight forward,
a kiss to the heart that is felt in the moment.

This voice you hear is birdsong,
the high good mornings in the early glow of a winter dawn.
And though, I can’t sing, I do have a song.

It is a song for myself
that is a song for you.

A song aching in joints and exasperating in their creaks.
A melody weary with the troubles of the day.
An arrangement undulating with the sounds
of hunger growing hungrier, and fear becoming more afraid.

I have a voice that spreads like flowers during the flourishing of May,
a voice whose humming brightness reveals the black echo
of distant groaning and iron grinding.

There is deep and bubbling sadness
at the bottom of far-off seas.
There is deep and bubbling sadness
within nearby puddles and lakes.

The sorrows resonate inside of me,
as I feel their mournful ripples along my voice’s quivering strings.

I walk about neighborhoods whistling my tune,
but when I do, I hear it all,
the real biting blues
of silence.

I hear it all
with ears I was given to love things.

I hear it all
and my voice breaks.

I hear it all
and my tears are salted
with shaded tones of voices no longer singing,

voices no longer mirroring
the stars on the surface of their midnight faces,

voices no longer tingled
by the earthly sensations of wind and rain.

But this is why my heavy tears
have a place.

Tears nourish music,
allows song to blossom more richly
from lips—like a rose refined through grief.

I know I can’t sing well,
but I can use the teary lyric of my life to worship
the things people have lost.

I can remind the sky that inside we love
the dance of morning and night,
and seasons and breaths.

That we love the inward
and outward, ebbing
and flowing,
rhythm of seas and passions
had in velvety secret.

Though I have one voice, my song is a chorus.

It’s the friend one has in the other.
It’s the unconditional lover.
It’s the mother and father.

I sing to protect you.
I sing to caress you.
I sing to tell you stories at night.

Though you may feel
isolated within the belly of darkness,
and the air that slips through the cracks may feel
as cold as hell can be,
I want you to note
the music hiding in the whispers of cold.

I want you to listen, to hear
the refrain that says to you,

kindly and truthfully,

One is never alone.

In the morning, there is the bird
firmly perched atop your shoulder,
and he is singing his tune,
a tune alive with the goodness of sensation,
of pulse in veins and air in lungs,
and soft long light along soft skin.

He is singing boldly and playfully,
dancing with goosebumps rising,
rising with the sun and the hour
of your life and his note;

rising,
it keeps rising,

this song he sings,
this song he cries, this song I sing for you.

As a breath of air fills my lungs,
I hear a bird-cry.

I do not recognize it and think to myself
how good.

Most of my thoughts
spend themselves on people,
on internalizing their rigid delineations,
so that I can say
“this is I”
and believe it.

But this bird I cannot see,
only hear,
is far greater than I could ever be,
as its song is much deeper, much humbler,
than any poem I struggle to write.

I say this because its song is not for me,
its breath not mine,
and no effort is wasted
on my delight.

Its song asks nothing and says nothing,
avoiding the greatest of all follies,
and speaking truth.

For what is truer than a bird being a bird,
and air being air,
and a foolish child misunderstanding both—
calling their combination
“song”.

I.
There is only The Way
The exhaustion of the body through hard training
The winter air that meets hot skin
The stream that rises into space
The spirit
is of body, mind, and nature
Here, the Self is again

II.
A warm hermitage
The musty sweat of one’s life
The pure air of winter
Heat and cold meeting and dancing
One is the offspring of a cyclone
Pure, flawed, and innocent

III.
It is easy to remain still while submerged in peace
It is harder to be a stone in a coursing river
But one must learn

IV.
There is the quiet of one’s life
In it one may find the riches of dreams
The garden of one’s mind is abundant
Flowers are in bloom at every moment
A single moment’s realization is all it takes
The source of all treasures is oneself

I want you to know
that this life of yours
is the sunshine shimmer
on a pond’s surface.

You may not feel this,
you may be overwhelmed
by guns firing inside your head,
but believe me

you really are
the morning and mist
on leaves.

When you open your eyes, you begin
the World.

You are born every day,
and every day
you are found mixed within particles of earth:

cool grasses of evenings
soft and curled underfoot,
seasons praying
in every natural tongue and tone,
snowflakes alight with firestorm passions
sacrificing themselves for a flower’s growth.

Yes, I know
the demands of the day seem not to end,
that debts continue to grow fatter and more deformed,
that friendships lose their color and grow old,
and that loneliness sometimes creeps in
at festivals, on roads, in waters,
above cities, within
quiet along the ledge
of the limits of your pain,

but please, do not ignore the simple truth sprouted:

the body that is your mind that is your World.

Always remember that you are rooted
deep within the womb
of time and space and matter and breath.

Do not ignore the rising of your chest
as you stretch the branches of your arms beyond
the rippling blue blanket that drapes
dreams and hopes,
songs and prayers,
in the miracle of sky.

Between your fingers,
those gentle twigs,
beams

the sun
of the Individual.

It wakes after the night
breaks

and falls.

     Do you hear that?
     A baby’s first cry,
     the first ripple in the pond.