Book Released May 16! The Selected Poems of Nancy Wood

The Nancy Wood Literary Trust has published My Help Is in the Mountain: The Selected Poems of Nancy Wood. Order your copy on Amazon today. Search for “Nancy Wood nature poetry”.

This book gathers legendary Southwestern author Nancy Wood’s most enduring poems about divine nature, the strength of women, love, family, and loss.

Praise for Spirit Walker: “This beautiful volume provides serenity, contemplation, and spiritual richness, experiences that are all too rare in this clamorous age.” –School Library Journal

Praise for Sacred Fire: “Wood writes affectingly about the interconnectedness of the people and the natural world, about the Sacred Fire that symbolizes their spirit, about the demon of progress, and about the need to strengthen the things that remain.” –Booklist

Feather – May 2022

From Shaman’s Circle, 1996, by Nancy Wood

 

The bluebird and I were friends, the kind that depend on one another

to reaffirm life’s patterns and to embrace the cleansing wind.

He awakened me with a song each morning and in his voice I recognized

his wider experience of rising above difficulty to reach

The purity of clouds and wind and sun. In my garden I offered him

water and seed and acceptance, never knowing if he understood

My simple gifts were meant to praise him. Then one day upon the ground

I noticed a single bluebird feather. What deeper gift can a bird

Give than what enables him to fly? Or to sing the song of his creation

to me, forever rooted to the ground?

Letting Go – April 2022

From Wild Love, 1996, by Nancy Wood (published only in Japanese)

 

In my middle-aged weariness I lived with the ache

of memory. My days were flushed with shadows

of desire which sent me on paths where I had gone before,

certain each new love would be the last.

 

Who was I, then? A woman who yearned for happiness,

the kind that other people have? A woman with

a shrinking horizon that imprisoned me within

the walls of indecision? I worked as women work,

fearlessly and uncomplaining, knowing

I would survive. Then love came along

 

through the blindness of my fear and touched my heart

with music I’d never heard before. I am too old

for silliness, but I am silly now, too old for love, but love

insists on being recognized. Letting go of loneliness

is easier than holding on to fear. In my twilight years

I gather moonbeams, knowing they are real.

I wish the quiet heart – March 2022

From War Cry on a Prayer Feather, 1979, by Nancy Wood

 

I wish the quiet heart.

Forced to choose a separate world

I crawl in order to stand alone.

I wish the quiet heart.

An exile from my borrowed land

I search for a place to call home.

I wish the quiet heart.

I wish the quiet land.

All around me quiet.

All around me peaceful.

All around me lasting.

All around me home.

The Breath of Fire – February 2022

From Sacred Fire, 1998, by Nancy Wood

 

The sacred mountains call to me when life becomes

too hard to bear

and all that stands between me and despair is

a little waterfall. With each mile I climb,

my sadness melts away

and I feel my old self returning.

The sacred mountains cure my anger

and replenish my will to resist

those who would diminish me.

 

In wildness, I am made whole by beauty.

In wildness, I am humbled by majesty.

In wildness, I am content to find

eternity in a buttercup

and courage in a drop of rain.