For the Love of Nature
A full moon
dim stars
and cricket song...
In the stillness
of the heat
the wings of birds
can almost be heard
flapping...
The air tastes delicious
the trees are talking
the sky is traveling
and I am happy...
It’s quiet now in the neighborhood
morning’s words long before
spoken...*
Drawn to nature, and living alone, the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars ... dim and bright..., are my family. To them I say, “Good morning” always, although preferably to a sunrise, and “Good night” once the darkening sky reveals its lights. You see, my favorite room is not within. It is the patio. Here, in my pajamas, after my morning prayer to Baba, I come out to face the sun rising through a tree on an opposing empty lot of brush, some trash, and at times grazing cows and water buffalo of a herder passing by. On the front is a wide dirt area and adjacent undeveloped lot of rough grasses and tall homes on both sides and across to a lane there. In this viewing room, I greet the sun beginning with, “Good-morning sun, good morning trees, and birds, and earth, and sky. Good morning creatures. It’s a new morning, a new dawn, a new day. “Every day is a renewal, every morning the daily miracle, the joy you feel is life.”* Twelve hours later, I stand, back arched, head tilted back, chin uplifted as I gaze at the night sky and say, “Good night moon, good-night planets, good night dim stars...
My realization is, “Nature offers gentle relationships of familiarity to those open to receiving.”
* Written in April at Meherabad: the site of Avatar Meher Baba’s Tomb-Shrine (Samadhi) and site of world pilgrimage as well as His early primary residence, ashram, and headquarters of His activities until 1944; now overseen by the Meherabad Trust.
* Gertrude Stein, Every Day is Today (London UK: Pushkin Press, (2023), NA.