Heed the Call

Essential in pandemics, the woods call—
Come to us, unmasked and alone.
You who are weary of breathing your own stale words,
Come into our silence that transforms gasps into spirit.

Come close and walk softly on our hallowed ground,
Rediscovering the holiness of dirt.
Walk where honeysuckle incense whispers joy
And choir birds sing to quiet your internal ranting.

Come dwell here when the congregations shutter,
And all the world shelters in but carries on.
Find your way beneath old legacy oaks
Telling their tales of offering refuge.

Come weep beneath the hickory leaves,
Shimmering in a canopy when troubles press in.
Their sunlit dance will lift your eyes to the heavens
Where dreams of sweeter times are born.

Come be disconnected among sassafras sprouts
And receive a reprieve from daily counts of disease.
Feel the paw paws dare you to utter words like
Optimistic and joy without feeling ridiculous.

Come lie beneath a tulip poplar mast,
With billowing flowered bells that carry daydreams.
Wander in the gift of whim and fantasy
That awakens the spirit of peace.

Come smell cedar’s aromatic memory
Filling you with delight beyond your intellect.
Sweet as ironweed dancing with walnut trees
Just because the wind blows.

Come fall on your knees when you cannot contain
The beauty of bluebells blooming near a spotted fawn,
And give thanks for the essential woods
That have healed us again.


-- The Rev. Becca Stevens, posted on Facebook Oct. 26, 2020

There is Pleasure in the Pathless Woods (From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: —there let him lay.

--George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) (Baron Byron of Rochdale) English Romantic poet and politician