travels, reflections, poems….
By Sriya Narayanan Once a sparkling village bustling with biodiversity and economic activity, Nenmeli in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, had watched its green cover fade over the years. The village lands deteriorated over time A grueling water scarcity issue followed. Young residents were forced to migrate to cities to look for work and the elderly stayed…
In Nenmeli, life begins all over again — Forest Voices of India
A Great Indian fruit bat in the wild Over two years ago, in April of 2020, two Giant Indian Fruit Bats were rescued from Bangaluru City, in south India, and brought to the WRRC (Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre). Both are males that weighed 390 grams and 410 grams (nearly one pound each). The Covid…
Two fruit bat friends — Forest Voices of India
In a meandering land of mystic moons,
At the waystation
Between the worlds – unremembered, translucent,
Walking, not yet understanding,
Beyond the shifting sand dunes.
At the crossroads by the river
Of fish glimmering, shimmering,
In a sliver of moonlight
Waits a boat of mist,
In a time that is no
Time,
In a place that is no place,
We walk before the dawn
In a land of gentle grace,
In a land of mist and stars.
As we climb a tilted rise,
There ahead a mountain looms alone,
Home of fir trees, of summer’s moss,
And winter’s cold,
Of crystal stone,
Eclipsed in silver wings of snow
Of thrice-weathered rocks,
Of beings old
Older than the earth – from long before,
Of grandfathers that go along on a bent cane,
In the time that never was – sure-footed, wise,
Beyond a fog-inducing year
Of history
Come unpinned,
In a land that will wait,
Just past the wooden post of the gate,
There, where an angel’s footstep shone
On the dark
Valley floor – benevolent,
And be waiting, for the dawn that breaks,
Transcendent,
For the golden eagles to lift into the clear sun,
Once more,
Into the deep blue,
To fly,
To cry,
To lift their sky-
Engulfing intent
In awakening days
Of lakes
And the white, waving wildflowers,
The rose-enchanted nettles,
That sing songs of ancient power
In the cool wind
Anew
Where Kamakshi,
The black, opalescent one, ringed in every mystery,
She who is mother of the forest,
Of springing deer
And sparkling fawn,
Of flocks of horned lark,
Of the long-billed curlew
Who tiptoes across
The water’s edge then turns to glance
Again at the light-calling pinion jays,
While Kamakshi gathers up her winged petals
Of joy
Anew,
Now to dance
In the bright-
Singing rain.
© Copyright, Sharon St Joan, 2022
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Ramana Maharshi /rəˈmʌnə məˈhʌrʃi/ (30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950) was an Indian Hindu sage and jivanmukta (liberated being). He was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
Notes {1675} ~ MYSTICS {29} ~ Ramana Maharshi — DiosRaw
Sattal, Uttarakhand
Bird of the Day: Great Barbet — Organikos
Within the mystic rain
An echo
Calls toward the distant gateway
To a deer-enchanted meadow,
While the white-
Crowned sparrow
Finds her intended way
In the bobbing boat of cottonwood leaves
Along the weaving river of one day,
One
Afternoon.
Then, soon,
When the windows rush on by
From the train
That goes,
Where
No one knows,
In the evening
Of a lost spring,
In the foothills of the Western Ghats
Where the young Ganesha
Plays,
Picking lots
Of blueberries
For his mother, Parvati,
Eating a few –
Just one or two —
Trusting in the bright winds
Of eternity that growl,
That run past the rain,
Past the lumbering bears that prowl
Over the green hills of the forest of mist,
Of ashwagandha
Trees.
(Where does the rishi Agastya live now? Where
Does he walk long before the dawn
By the riverbanks of rain-washed song?)
And, way out beyond the moon
The deepening darkness – punctuated
Like the islands of the oceans,
With the star-winged flight
Of legions
Of strange-patterned flocks
Of owls, all though the night,
(Though owls do not really fly in flocks)
Now the hours of dark have hesitated,
So the spirit, Ayanar, patrols
The village outskirts, his course
Goes round and round,
Brave on his tall horse,
Who, now and then, drops his head to drink,
While reflections glint within the bowls
Of the pool by the stream,
There pings
The lilting sound
Of tadpoles
Who play among the rocks,
All waiting to grow into frogs that will sing
Deep songs
Within the dream,
To bless the mystery of the being of all souls
Who are the One Soul – Brahman,
While the rain falls
Within the silver calls
Of the long-eared owl,
Awake, in the ever-misted night.
© Copyrght, Sharon St Joan, 2021
If you like this poem, you might also like this website, Forest Voices of India https://forestvoicesofindia.com
On her swan-ringed island
Of mist and falling petals
Of song, Saraswathi stands
Holding the wild scent
Of the lilies of eternity
In her silver hand,
Her fingers braiding bright
Visions
Of the dawn-lit past
Of myth-hatched eons
Long ago
Singed in the flames
Of endings
Half-forgotten though,
Their names,
In the days that followed after
Of snow
And white-
Drifting mountains.
On the lapping lake
Pairs of swans sail
And shake
The water from their wings
Their white and gray cygnets trail
Behind
All in a row
Bobbing on the ruffled waves.
Up on the granite cliff
In the rock-cut caves
In tall
Jars
Of stone
Are ranged the rolls of palm leaf scrolls
That caught the words
Of poems flown
The whispering of languages, long gone,
That went on the wandering wind,
On the wings of the waters
The sacred song, the notes of forest birds
The sounds, the syllables, the brush strokes,
The ring of the chisel-hafted hieroglyph,
The eloquence of flowers,
All kept with care
From the child’s fist-drawn scribbles
To the holy vedas of the rishis,
Seers from the stars
All kept, with none slipped into the abyss
None swept aside
There
Are bundled reams
Of cotton
Cloth in all the colors of creation:
The pale-footed hue
Of the mourning dove and her mate,
The nestled orange feathers
Of the northern flicker,
The banded tail
Of the sharp-shinned
Hawk,
Shades of the stout
Trunks of the ficus
And the teak
The red glint
Of the setting sun
Across the pebbled upland creek
The blue
Tint
Of the lotus
And the silver halo
Of the moon that beams
Through the indigo
Ocean of the swift-sailing night
All abide,
Their essence
To ride along the clouds
Of each new dawn
That sings
On the shining cosmic
Tide
Every delight
Of the dance
Of the caterpillar
On the rain-bent
Amarillis.
In the sacred annals
Of her book-filled jars
All knowledge, beauty
And infinity
All that is real
Nothing lost.
And now the swans fly
Higher
In the air
Of crystal frost
Among the green enchanted lands.
Within her magic
Translucent jars
The least stir
Is known
Of every creature
The leaping gray-pawed squirrels
The rooting snout
Of the bristle-faced, brave boar
Then too, remembered is the way
To skip
Among the stars
Or how to weave a shimmering cloak
Or fabricate
A flying ship
Or stoke
An immortal fire
Against the bane-crossed
Cold
Or travel fast
Like racing light
The path to take
To a wondrous land
Of fairies, elves, and heroes bold,
The remedy for every ill
How to ply
The sea
Of time to find the age of gold
Hidden on a cliff-faced shore
And how to make
One’s way to the deepening core
Of the moss-footed forest
In an elvan autumn,
All knowledge past
And yet to be.
Where now the kind
Laughter
Of Saraswathi?
Where the haunting notes
Of the veena?
And the light
Beat of the mringdam?
Where the bells that peel
At dawn?
Where the peace
In the mourning call
Of the swans and the flocking geese?
And where the soft bleating of the goats
Clambering up the rock-strewn hill?
All wait,
Wild and free,
Still
In the luminous blue jars
Of the drifting sky
All that shines true
One day
To be born anew
When the mist settles,
With the glad-crying swans of sunrise,
Over the mountains
Of a far country.
Written around 2010
© Sharon St Joan, 2021
If you like this poem, you might also like this website, Forest Voices of India https://forestvoicesofindia.com
In the state of Tamil Nadu, in the south of India, stands a mountain covered in rocks, called Arunachala. It is four and a quarter hours southwest of Madras (Chennai), in the Eastern Ghats. A very sacred mountain, Arunachala is considered to be Lord Shiva Himself, not just his abode, but the God Himself.
The great Saint Ramana Maharshi, during a visionary experience at the age of 16, went to live there. He never left and spent his life at Arunachala, visited over time by many thousands of devotees. He was very fond of animals. Today, as well as his own grave, there are the graves of several of his favorite animals; including a cow named Lakshmi and a raven that he had rescued.
© Sharon St Joan, 2021
Photo: Sakthiprasanna
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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To ancient peoples, the world of nature was not made up of inanimate beings – or of beings less than ourselves.
Everything was alive and had a spirit and a presence.
The mountains were gods, the rivers goddesses.
The lakes, the oceans, the trees, the deserts, the forests – everything was living and conscious. Also, all the beings of the sky were alive – the sun, the planets, the moon, all the stars.
Life was present in every aspect of the universe. The sacred rocks were living entities.
All the animals – the fish, the whales, the bears, the lions, foxes, deer, all the birds, also the ants, the bees, the butterflies and all the insects.
We can see this perception still in the older (and wiser) belief systems of the world: Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism, in the world views of Native Americans.
Because ancient peoples saw and understood the spiritual essence of all of nature, there was reverence and respect for nature. Human beings took only what they needed for survival – and nothing more. They were respectful and not greedy. They listened to the voices and to the laws of nature. They were aware of the sacred beings of life. Because of this awareness, they did not destroy the planet earth.
Today, though we consider ourselves, in the modern world, to be much wiser, we are in fact, very ignorant. We see nature through blind eyes, not recognizing the living essence, the majesty, and the awareness of nature and the earth herself.
It is through this blindness and stupidity, that we destroy nature – through greed and oblivion.
No amount of calculating carbon footprints in a futile effort to save ourselves is going to work.
We must focus, not on ourselves, but on the ineffable beauty and life of nature herself.
To put it simply, we must go back to worshipping nature – to feeling a sense of reverence for the earth. We belong to the earth. It is only by returning to that sense of the sacred that we will be able to save the earth – and perhaps ourselves as well.
© Sharon St Joan, 2021
