Description
The earth carries a slow heartbeat with which we synchronize when we open our own hearts, downshifting from busy days to spacious wisdom, from mental chatter to a gracious sentience. In the natural world, breath deepens and our steps become more deliberate. We come into alignment with a rhythm often forgotten in the rush of demanding lives. The Good Earth offers refreshing reminders of the beauty of wild animals, rushing streams, and starlit nights. It returns us to a visceral knowing of the great gifts of nature to be felt in our bodies and eases our weary hearts. It restores peace to our troubled minds. Gratitude then naturally bubbles up, and we revel in renewed bodies, minds, and spirits.
You may find a sense of peace you didn’t realize you were missing by perusing the poems of The Good Earth: Canyons of Gratitude, and engage with a more profound sense of knowledge and resolve about how much you actually belong to nature, to others, and to yourself. In the process, may your own canyons of gratitude guide you toward greater wellbeing, with all of their attendant blessings.
Sample Poems
River Songs
Destined to the river on any day, alone,
You arrive, the audience to a waiting play,
And still yourself beside its’ lulling movement.
Each piece of water begins to play out and down and
Past you like a note you’ll never forget.
The music strengthens , strings and horns
And celestial sounds rising from the belly of the earth.
Transported through this wet river passageway,
Sounds melt around each waiting rock into your body, and
Slowly, like the long hand of time,
Become your own sounds,
until you begin to sing back to the river its’ own song
and the river sings you.
The deep meditation of the heart
rolls on notes alive with each furl of water
before and past your momentary body.
You dance inside yourself and join in, falling silent
Silent and hearing with the ears only you
and the river know
in that moment,
A water chord
rising to the sound of your long attention.
Wind Brother
Late summer rains have left their moisture clinging
to the moving canopy of tolerant sycamore trees—
I sway with them in lulled repose.
Cool breezes roll along the rim of a patient earth,
wafting cares off my tired body.
When the wind quiets I slip to the ground, sighing,
and wait for the slightest hint of God.
