Lake Bonny Park

After attending Lake Bonny Park I was able to understand the nature poetry on a deeper level. I sat still for about fifteen minutes allowing the words flowing through my head to settle into complete sentences. The winds were whistling around me. Rain was nearly falling from the dark depressing rain clouds that hovered above my unsettled head. I sat on the ground trying, patiently to arrange my thoughts. I needed to focus on what it was I wanted to say. What I wanted to express. Unable to concentrate on the task itself I pulled out the poems by Mary Oliver. I concentrated on every word trying desperately to find the meaning of each sentence. I finally decided that not all art should be dissected for a deeper meaning, or the authors’ reason for writing the poem. Some poems should just be read. They should be read and understood on a basic level. They should be heard and listened to carefully, letting each word roll off ones tongue. The way the words describe each aspect of Oliver’s thoughts helped me to begin to write my poem of nature. Before I met the paper with my pen I closed my eyes and bowed my head and thanked God for his beautiful creation. Then I asked God to grant me the words he would have me use to describe this indescribable earth that I was encompassed with. I then opened my eyes, read the words that applied to me directly from Oliver.

“I lounge on the grass, that’s all. So simple. Then I lie back until I am inside the cloud that is just above me but very high, and shaped like a fish. Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-wanting. Then the blue jay cries out his riddle in his carping voice, I return.”

I started my poem writing every word that God granted me.

Free To Dance by Kristen DeKlavon

I sat. I listened.

I let the winds cradle me in its gusts,

And whisper in my ear the song of freedom.

I let the fall leaves tiptoe their way around me.

Dancing as they fall to end their lives.

Almost as if they declare to the world their freedom from the life they’ve lived for so long.

However, they fall.

They slowly fall all around me, never to begin again.

Golden in their color they leave behind a beautiful spirit of joy.

Their short lives end.

And they dance in sequence with the wind as they fall to their death,

To their despair.

They don’t seem to mind.

That is how I would like to leave the earth. In a dance,

Without a care in the world,

Declaring to the earth the state of my freedom from he life I lived stuck on this earth.

I’ll be free to reside in the Heavens.

I’ll be free to dance.