just a poem...again

tonight the moon was that perfect sliver and beside her a star so bright it must be a planet and the rest of the night lay deeply dark, no clouds.  as the moon sunk the sky filled with so many lights. i wanted to bring out a mat, and fall asleep watching them, finding their patterns and stories.

 

 

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.   

- Mary Oliver