NATURE - a poem by Murray Hidary

How do you see the world? 

Is it with curiosity or caution? 

Is it in wonder or withdrawal? 

How do you hear the world?

Do you hear the rhythms and rhymes? 

Do you listen for the whispers? 

How do you taste and smell and feel through the world? 

Are you pulled into the intimacy of experience so closely

that there is no room for doubt?

Have you ever gotten so low to the ground

to see the industrious horizon of an ant?

Have you ever imagined yourself so high

to feel a falcon’s wings cushioned on a column of warm rising air? 

Or deep under the water turning your gaze upward

to the sun, as it wiggles and dances in the rippling perspective of a fish? 

Have you ever encountered a flower too shy to come out in the day? 

I met a moonflower once under the stars and cover of darkness.

Have you ever listened, seeking no answer?

Have you ever walked with no destination? 

A gentle breeze beckons me

to turn down this unknown path. 

Tumbling leaves playfully gesture for me to follow

as they disappear around the bend. 

The brook seems to agree as it babbles by in the same direction. 

My thoughts seem to march in the same rhythm as my steps.

Until they don’t. 

Until their cadence slows 

and slows. 

What happens when we slow it all down?

What happens when we slow it down - to find a new rhythm? 

To be the stillness within all the movement. 

What happens when we create an open space?  

A space for reflection. For contemplation. 

A space for nothing. 

Can we empty ourselves of ourselves? 

All the things that get in the way of our greatest possibility. 

Can we empty ourselves of the past, the pettiness, 

the grind and the grudges? 

Can we be present and pay attention?

Can we create rather than compare?

Can we forgive and forge forward?

What arises within you? 

What surfaces in this space? 

In this clearing can you hear the faint whispering of your intuition? 

What is it saying? 

What lies within you that yearns to live?

That desires to enter the world? 

What will you create? Who will you create? Who will you be? 

I continue my meandering around the next bend. 

I think it might rain soon. 

I can smell the imminent petrichor.

I think I’ll stop here in this verdant glade. 

The forest trees, silent sentinels, shelter me, offering sanctuary. 

I can hear the sky wanting to whisper. 

Interpreting leaves translate the droplets on their way down. 

It all vibrates 

as I vibrate too.

It all shakes.

It all trembles.

It all quivers

as I quiver and shake and tremble. 

I tremble with awe. 

What teeters now on the threshold of this fading light?

When you really look. 

When you push in on the boundaries

You don’t find any. 

Where does the cloud begin and the cloud end?

Where does the sky begin and end? 

Where do the trees begin and end? 

Where does the ocean begin and the ocean end? 

Where do you begin and where do you end?

When you finally see the landscape you can only be silenced by it. 

Nature sometimes reveals her wisdom. 

And Nature hides her wisdom. 

Often in plain sight and sound. 

In wistful whisperings 

she shares her secrets. 

Boundaried and unbounded.

At once known yet mysterious.

Revealed yet unveiled.

Already known.

Always known,

but now remembered.

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