Category: Artwork
By Laura J. Merrill
Readers of Sharon St Joan’s blog site, “Echoes in the Mist” (recently changed from “Voices-and-Visions”), will be familiar with her ethereal poems, which have always resonated with me as a view into the sacred soul of Nature.
Over the last two years, Sharon has graciously devoted some of her time and creative talent to composing twelve poems for the latest volume of Secret Voices from the Forest—Thoughts and Dreams of North American Trees.
Volume Three: The East, in which you will find her verses, concerns a few of the trees native to the eastern part of this continent—from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean—some well known and some quite uncommon, and some wholly unique to this continent, although not necessarily familiar to all of us; examples are Sugar maple, American chestnut, Pawpaw and Tulip Tree.
These brightly illustrated volumes familiarize us with each tree, utilizing facts about it and its native surroundings, as well as a few particulars about some of the animals and other plants that share its environment. At the same time, each tree is given a chance to “speak for itself,” in a section titled, “Reflections,” in which we can imagine how the tree might see its place in the world and how it may view us, as fellow travelers on the Earth.
In the world of books about nature, these publications are distinctive, blending fact and fantasy for adults who are willing to consider the idea that we are all equal participants in the great work of Creation.
You can find this, as well as the first two volumes, The West and Midcontinent, on Amazon at this link.
Enjoy!
Listen, and hear
Within the moon the silent flight
Of white
Crane
Feathers,
While stars ring like bells in a sky of snow.
Did you know
That the moon is hollow
And it chimes?
Now, past clouds of bitter rain,
Of weathers
Sullen in the jagged wind,
At a sharp bend in the long road,
Shines the light of butterfilies beyond the shards of the dark,
The spark
Of grace, as yet unimagined,
A hand of tree bark
Offers peace, abhaya mudra: “Fear
Not,” a message,
Seek and ye
Shall find
All truth
Within the call
Of the star, cloaked in a misted shawl.
Soon, between the bones of yesteryear
Rise the rushing waters to the ridge
Of ending times.
There at the top of the narrow stair
Opens the rock-enchanted desert that will echo eternity,
Shimmering stones,
Who
Sing that the shadow
Has gone, though it is not that the shadow
Has gone, but just that the sun is real and the shadow not, after all,
And so
The holy one, unknown, will walk again on the straight path,
Will hold the innocent deer high in his hand
(In the land
Of the gold dragon who gnashes
Her emerald jaw,
Extending her five-toed
Paw)
There the brave one walks, placing the sun anew,
Engulfing the burning cities of the mind,
And – casting death at last behind,
Cleanses the earth of ashes.
Poem: © Sharon St Joan, 2017
Photo: © Dbpetersen | Dreamstime
