nature

oh. . . To be a squirrel

| Shari Daniels 
Oh, Dear Squirrel,
racing along the twisting branches
high among the tallest of oaks,
leaping from tree to tree
across the air without hesitation

Are you not afraid
of missing a steady branch
your estimations a wee bit off?
or worse. . .
the branch not able to sustain you at all?
and breaking - prompting a long, treacherous fall?

Has this happened to you, Dear Squirrel?
If so - 
How do you manage?
to continue climbing back up 
on the highest of trees 
and repeating the feat?

I mean it must seem like the ground
is light years away from your place so high in the sky,
Do you look down?
or keep your eyes on the road
intent on your destination?

Please tell me dear squirrel,
how do you do it?
What's your fear busting secret?

For I desire to fly like you
across the sky
from tree to tree

with the bravery of a squirrel.

draft 2022 Shari Daniels


Writing and sharing a poem a day ~ 
"The writing is inhaling and the sharing is exhaling.
They don't have to be good, they just have to be true."
                      ~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Where is home?

| Shari Daniels 
Where is home? I ask
my hunter husband,
for the geese and the ducks?
Is it south or is it north?

They nest in the north,
he replies, and then
head south when it gets cold, 
his eyes occupied somewhere else.

I realize that I say,
brows furrowed.
But where is home?

He didn't have a certain answer
underneath the response
he mumbled.

Humans tend to search
for their home
have a need to call one place
home.

But maybe home
is where ever you are
as long as love
is near.

And safety and rest.

Peace and calm.

draft 2022 Shari Daniels

Writing a poem-a-day.
They don't have to be good,
They just have to be true.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

How a message arrives

| Shari Daniels
green buds and their urgency

An early morning transcribing
messages from beyond
the sky- – a stunning blue
spring buds beginning their escape

an infrequent flock of seagulls
high above – cry to steal my attention
racing the robins to the first
morning call

The pen harkens back to the voice
of a poet, who the day before
I’d savored his own scribed words
his father’s voice
laced with his own

Writing poems is a service to others
gift those poems to someone
with the nib of your pen, his lesson
Share without fear! A poem can’t wait
for perfect conditions!

Braiding his message with that
of the morning seagulls cries
and the urgency of these spring leaves
it all flows at once into the river –
my passport to the day

The sky is the limit! the chorus sings.

Shari Daniels ~draft

To listen to Kim Stafford’s words: podcast/rattlecastpoetry: https://youtu.be/ZT0cnRH1Jy8

The Wild Remedy ~Mending a Weary Soul

| Shari Daniels

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It’s all I have to bring today

This, and my heart beside

This, and my heart, and all the fields

And all the meadows wide

Be sure you count – should I forget

Some one the sum could tell –

This, and my heart, and all the Bees

Which in the clover dwell.

~Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)

This weary soul of mine succumbed to social media early in the morning, as some days, scrolling is all I can muster. My hand, even too exhausted to lift the pen to my notebook page.

On this particular day, a teacher-writer-soul friend, Mary Lee Haun, was also having a weary kind of day.  Her #poemofpresence whispered to the quiet corners of my dissonance:

today I am sad

please don’t try to cheer me up

there’s nothing for it

My fingers typed a few words to let her know that I felt her angst as well. I shared with her a word I’d recently learned, one that named this kind of tired – a word in Tibetan:  ye tang che. The ye part means “totally, completely”, and the rest of it means “exhausted”. Altogether, ye tang che means “totally exhausted”.

Devendra Banhart taught me this word, while listening to him on a recent episode of the On Being podcast. The lovely language and voices of this podcast are healing, so I turn here often in times of need. The word, ye tang che, Devendra credits to have learned from Pema Chadron in his book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

I had jotted it into my notebook to bring up in moments of despair. Like this.

A lovely dear friend of us both, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, swept in to save us on this dreary day. My heart sang just seeing her name and an image of her responding to our short conversation.

She offered a gift: a recommendation of a book.

The Wild Remedy ~ How Nature Mends Us by Emma Mitchell.

With a slight surge of new energy, a quick exploration brought me to the contents of Emma’s book. Emma suffers of “the grey slug” or depression, as some know it as. She shares her journey through nature as a balm to lift the grey from her days. Winding paths through the woods, drawing and painting the discoveries along her way fill her illustrated diaries. Month by month, she charts her highs and lows and the neuroscience of how our bodies, minds, spirits and hearts receive the natural healing benefits of plants and wildlife when we step into the wild.

Her book arrived on my doorstep yesterday.

All of a sudden, I’m witnessing more bees, and fields and meadows wide.

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~ from my morning walk ~

And . . . my heart is beginning to mend from all of this ye tang che.