Poetry in Nature’s Prose

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Charles Baudelaire

Nature’s  verses can now be heard, whispered in the waters of a rushing brook or sung by a summer breeze across the expanse of a rolling river.

 

Au Sable River, Michigan

 

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Days Like Sweet-Scented Herbs

Day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs.

–Henry David Thoreau

Kensington Park, Michigan

Matthaei Gardens, University of Michigan

Matthaei Gardens, Michigan

To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars…
—–Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

Hartwick Pines, Michigan

Come, Gentle Night, Loving Night

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-browed night,
Give me my Romeo. And when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Happy Valentine’s Day from W. Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

Newburgh Lake, Michigan

 

I Hear It in the Deep Heart’s Core

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

William B. Yeats, Lake Isle of Innisfree

On this February day, my thoughts drift to summer memories.

Newburgh Lake, Michigan

and Food for Future Years

While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey

Newburgh Lake, Michigan

Summer Solace

I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that lov’d not wisely but too well.

Shakespeare, Othello

Huron National Forest, Michigan

For Peace Comes Dropping Slow

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

William B. Yeats, Lake Isle of Innisfree

Miracle of Snowflakes

She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable?”

Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

This weekend’s foot of  snow has given the Michigan landscape a white frosting, but the ephemeral nature of our weather ensures that its presence will be fleeting.  Before it disappears, come walk with me across an icy stream and  along  a woodland trail.

Kensington Park, Michigan

A Memory as Its Trace

This river before me emerging quietly from the forest, then disappearing back into the wilderness–leaving a memory as its only trace.  Like a lost love.

Sturgeon River, Michigan