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Posts Tagged ‘forest’

 Sometimes Grief Looks Like This 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 19, 2025| 4 Comments »

 

 
The woman walks into the woods.
How beautiful, she thinks, though
on closer look, all around her
the woods sprawl in wild disarray.
Fallen logs decompose, wood rots,
decays. Bark peels. Brambles scramble.
Berries darken and shrivel. Moss drops off
in great chunks. Broken sticks hang
from broken branches. And all of it belongs.
She thinks how messy grief can be.
The barbed thorns of anger, vast thickets
of I don’t know. Most times there is
no trail at all. Why did she think
human nature would be any different from
nature itself? Oh this messy humaning.
She tells herself, All belongs. All belongs.
The more she believes it, the more she feels
the forest inside her, witnesses how the more
it stretches, the more it rots, the more it grows.
 

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Little Explorer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 24, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
To walk in the woods
is a kind of prayer.
Come in on quiet feet
and feel how you are not
alone. The golden trees
are full of eyes.
What are those sounds
you cannot name?
Whatever is untamed
inside you sings along.
Dwarfed by awe,
you might feel small,
but the inner song says,
you are all.
 

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Letting Go of Knowing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 13, 2023| 14 Comments »


 
 
Walking in the sweet honey
and musky scented woods,
I keep searching for what smells
so good, until finally I let
myself be content to walk
in the woods with a honey scent,
and I give up for a time
on naming the world,
and let a step be a step,
let a scent be a scent
and know only I am lucky,
lucky to walk in the musky woods,
the air so refreshing, so sweet.

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One Foreshadowing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 10, 2022| 4 Comments »


still seeds in the ground
all those forests
we’ll someday walk through

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Thank You, Gary Paulsen

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 14, 2021| 12 Comments »

 You are your most valuable asset. Don’t forget that. You are the best thing you have.
            —from Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, (May 17, 1939-October 14, 2021) 


How many children went down in that plane, Gary?
How many children fell out of the sky alone
and learned they could live
for months in the woods
with only a hatchet for help?
How many kids learned
that tough conditions were a bidding
to bring their best self?
My daughter was nine or ten
when she first drew your book from the shelf
and found herself stranded in the northern woods.
Then she went there on purpose again and again.

Now, three years later, she wanders a forest of loss,
and in so many ways she’s alone.
Gary, you gave her a story to believe in
in which young people survive, find their way home.
Your story’s a sharp tool my daughter can wield
to make sparks in these darkened days.
I thank you for teaching her
how she might rise from a crash,
how in these woods of sorrow,
though I would build her a fire if I could,
she is the best thing she has.

*In case you are unfamiliar with Gary Paulsen, you can read more here. As he says, “Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty.”

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