into something better

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
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.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
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.

from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver
© Mary Oliver

08.29.08 - Wilderness

"I live in the woods out of necessity. I get out of bed
in the middle of the night because it is imperative
that I hear that silence of the night, alone, and, with
my face on the floor, say psalms, alone, in the
silence of the night.
...the silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet
dark warmth of the whole world is my love and out
of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that
is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the
secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their
beds all over the world.
-Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life, 240.