Knowing the Earth – May 2018

From Spirit Walker, 1993, by Nancy Wood

 

To know the Earth on a first-name basis

You must know the meaning of river stones first.

Find a place that calls to you and there

Lie face down in the grass until you feel

Each plant alive with the mystery of beginnings.

Move in a circle until you discover an insect

Crawling with knowledge in its heart.

Examine a newborn leaf and find a map of a universe

So vast that only Eagles understand.

Observe the journey of an ant and imitate its path

Of persistence in a world of bigger things.

Borrow a cloud and drift high above the Earth,

Looking down at the smallness of your life.

The journey begins on a path made of your old mistakes.

The journey continues when you call the Earth by name.

You shall ask – August 2017

 

Nancy Wood poem poster 3: You shall ask
Poem poster includes Nancy Wood’s photograph of Fort Union Ranch, NM, circa 1980.

 

From Many Winters, 1974, by Nancy Wood

 

You shall ask

What good are dead leaves

And I will tell you

They nourish the sore earth.

You shall ask

What reason is there for winter

And I will tell you

To bring about new leaves.

You shall ask

Why are the leaves so green

And I will tell you

Because they are rich with life.

You shall ask

Why must summer end

And I will tell you

So that the leaves can die.

 

Invitation to Life – May 2017

From Dancing Moons, 1995, by Nancy Wood

 

I invite you to life

and you send regrets.

Sorry can’t come, too late or

too soon, too busy, too scared,

Too much involved in the business of living.

 

The reasons you give

are a song all their own.

off-key and shallow, with the sound

of avoidance, the rhythm

Familiar, the words echoing the same old excuses.

 

I’ll issue no more invitations

to you. The party’s been

cancelled, the guests won’t arrive

in time to find me having

 

A dance all my own. You see,

 

I invited myself to my life

and finally accepted.

The Beads of Life – April 2017

From Dancing Moons, 1995, by Nancy Wood

 

The space between events is where

most of life is lived. Those half-remembered moments

of joy or sadness, fear or disappointment, are merely

beads of life strung together

to make one expanding necklace of experience.

 

The space between events is where

we grow old. From sunrise to sunset one day lives

as another day emerges from the fluid womb of dawn,

the first bead strung upon

the everlasting thread of life.

 

The space between events is where

knowledge marries beauty. In quiet reflection

we remember only the colored outline of events,

the black and white of war, the rosiness

that surrounded our first love.

 

The space between events is why

we go on living. The laughter of a child or

the sigh of wind in a canyon becomes the music

we hear expanding in our hearts each time

we gather one more bead of life.

All of my life is a dance – August 2016

From Many Winters, 1974, by Nancy Wood

 

All of my life is a dance.
When I was young and feeling the earth
My steps were quick and easy.
The beat of the earth was so loud
That my drum was silent beside it.
All of my life rolled out from my feet
Like my land which had no end as far as I could see.
The rhythm of my life was pure and free.
As I grew older my feet kept dancing so hard
That I wore a spot in the earth
At the same time I made a hole in the sky.
I danced to the sun and the rain
And the moon lifted me up
So that I could dance to the stars.
My head touched the clouds sometimes
And my feet danced deep in the earth
So that I became the music I danced to everywhere.
It was the music of life.
Now my steps are slow and hard
And my body fails my spirit.
Yet my dance is still within me and
My song is the air I breathe.
My song insists that I keep dancing forever.
My song insists that I keep rhythm
With all of the earth and the sky.
My song insists that I will never die.