THE NATURE OF THINGS

   WHERE THE WILD THINGS SHOULDN'T BE

How would you like to live in a cage
That was just about ten feet square,
With no toys to play with and nothing to do---
Just you and a bed and a chair?
Oh, sure you'd be fed (the same thing each day)
You'd have water (unless they forgot)
And since you would never be going outside
you wouldn't get cold, or too hot.
But oh, you'd be lonely just sitting alone
with no one to talk to all day.
You'd remember the trees, and the grass and the breeze,
the places where you used to play.
You'd remember your friends, you'd remember the sky,
and games and strawberries and sun,
And you'd know you could never go skating again
or go swimming, or ride bikes, or run.
You'd get mad and scream and throw things around;
you'd kick and you'd pound on the wall,
and your owners would scold you, and say to themselves,
"He isn't a nice pet at all!"
The more you got mad, the less they would like you,
the less they'd remember to care
About if you had water or if you got fed
or if you were lonely in there.
And then you would know what it's like to be kept
as a pet when you're meant to be free,
and you'd listen when wild things are trying to say
"Please don't make a pet out of me."

                    ~~ Beverly Armstrong

Poet: Jon Silkin (taken from "Life Prayers")

I ask sometimes why these small animals
With bitter eyes, why we should care for them.
I question the sky, the serene blue water
But it cannot say. It gives no answer.
And no answer releases in my head
A procession of grey shades, patched and whimpering.
Dogs with clipped ears, wheezing cart horses
A fly without shadow and without thought.
Is it with these menaces to our vision
With this procession, led by a man carrying wood
We must be concerned? The holy land, the rearing
Green island should be kindlier than this.
Yet the animals, our ghosts, need tending to.
Take in the whipped cat and the blinded owl;
Take up the man-trapped squirrel upon your shoulder.
Attend to the unnecessary beasts.
From growing mercy and a moderate love
Great love for the human animal occurs.
And your love grows. Your great love grows and grows.

Poet: Robert Nye (taken from "Life Prayers:)

Outside my window two tall witch-elms toss their inspired green heads in the sun
and lean together,whispering.Trees make the world a proper place.

Poet: Walt Whitman (from "Earth Prayers")

I think I could turn and live with animals, they’re so placid and self-contain’d.
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (from "Earth Prayers")

Love animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals, they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you – alas, it is true of almost every one of us!

Robert Duncan (from "Earth Prayers")

The temple of the animals has fallen into disrepair.
The pad of feet has faded.
The panthers flee the shadows of the day.
The smell of musk has faded but lingers there
lingers, lingers. Ah, bitterly in my room.
Tired, I recall the animals of last year.

The altars of the bear, tribunals of the ape,
solitudes of elephantine gloom, rare
zebra-striped retreats, prophecies of dog,
sanctuaries of the pygmy deer.
Were there rituals I had forgotten?
Animal calls to which those animal voices replied,
calld and calld until that jungle stirrd.

Were there voices that I heard?
Slept out his winter in my heart.
Did he seek my heart or ever sleep there?
I have seen the animals depart,
forgotten their voices, or barely remembered,
like the last speech when the company goes,
or the beloved face that the heart knows,
forgets and knows – 
I have heard the dying footsteps fall.
The sound has faded, but lingers here    
Ah, bitterly I recall
the animals of last year.

"The Heaven of Animals," by James Dickey

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.
Having no souls, they have come
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.
To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required;
The richest wood,
The deepest field.
For some of these, It could not be the place It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done, But with teeth and claws grown perfect.
More deadly than they can believe,
They stalk more silently, And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent Upon the bright backs of their prey
May take years In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk
Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them, And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance,
Fulfilling themselves without pain. 
At the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk 
Under the tree.
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away:
And if they could they still would be destroyed.
Chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar
could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns
or magnificent bold backbones. It took more than
three thousand years to make some of the trees
in these western woods. God has cared for these trees
,saved them from drought, disease, a thousand straining
leveling tempests and floods: but he cannot save them from fools.

John Muir,1901

’ Squirrel"

    You have gathered nuts by the score, exactly  
    predicting if you’ll need more
    Teach me to take no more than I need
    Trusting great mystery to harvest the seed “

                          Medicine Cards

Prayer before the U.S. Senate - 1975 by Frank Fools Crow, Old Lord of the Holy Men
Ceremonial Chief and Medicine Man of the Lakota Nation

"In the presence of this house, Grandfather, Wakan-Tanka, and from
the directions where the sun sets,
and from the direction of cleansing power,   
and from the direction of the rising un,
and from the direction of the middle of the day.
Grandfather, Wakan-Tanka,
Grandmother, the Earth who hears everything,
Grandmother, because you are woman, for this reason you are kind,
I come to you this day.

To tell you to love the red men, and watch over them,
and give these young men the understanding
because, Grandmother, from you comes the good things, good things
that are beyond our eyes to see have been blessed in our midst
for this reason I make my supplication known to you again.

Give us a blessing so that our words and actions be one in unity,
and that we be able to listen to each other, in so doing,
we shall with good heart walk hand in hand to face the future.

In the presence of the outside, we are thankful for many blessings.
I make my prayer for all people, the children, the women and the men.
I pray that no harm will come to them,
and that on the great island, there be no war,
that there be no ill feelings among us
From this day on may we walk hand in hand
So be it.

                                  John Clare (1793 - 1864)
THE MAPLE TREE

The Maple with its tassell flowers of green
That turns to red, a stag horn shapèd seed
Just spreading out its scallopped leaves is seen,
Of yellowish hue yet beautifully green.
Bark ribb'd like corderoy in seamy screed
That farther up the stem is smoother seen,
Where the white hemlock with white umbel flowers
Up each spread stoven to the branches towers
And mossy round the stoven spread dark green
And blotched leaved orchis and the blue-bell flowers -
Thickly they grow and neath the leaves are seen.
I love to see them gemm'd with morning hours.
I love the lone green places where they be
And the sweet clothing of the Maple tree.

"A squirrel leaping from bough to bough, and making the wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion,--is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Henry Miller (1891-1980)
What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?
 

Aldo Leopold  (1887-1948)
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
 

John Muir (1838-1914):I only went out for a walk and  finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.