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Quiet Time
It is our quiet time.
We do not speak because the voices are within us.
It is our quiet time.
We do not walk, because the earth is all within us.
It is our quiet time.
We do not dance, because the music has lifted us to a place the
spirit is.
We rest in all of nature. We wake when the seven sisters* wake.
We greet them in the sky over the opening of the kiva.
~ Nancy Wood
Dear Poetry of Nature Friends,
This morning I opened the curtains to find a rare snow day! I muse on the spirit of midwinter and where to begin this year of Poetry of Nature (fondly known to us as PON). What I crave in heart, mind and spirit is Nancy Wood’s reflection on quiet time.
I adore Wood's sacred poem, how it so neatly honors quiet time and winter, a time of stillness and deep rest “in all of nature”. When I rest in all of Nature, I find deep beauty, balance and ultimately rejuvenation to be the gifts of this season.
It’s important we cultivate quiet and stillness, if we are to spring forth when the seven sisters (*the Pleaides) appear in the kiva’s opening. Wood’s poem gives me permission to honor my winter spirit, the sleepy bear within myself. There is plenty of time and space for this necessary comfort, hibernation and reflection. Indeed, without this quiet and stillness, the seasons could not be, nor would we!
“Within you, there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can
retreat at any time and be yourself.”
~Herman Hesse
Quiet Meditation
Before we dive into poem making, in the spirit of quiet mindfulness, I offer you this meditation. You may find this meditation to be a radical act of beauty and love that lets you deepen your relationship with Nature and poem making. I realize that this might feel counterintuitive. It could feel daring, especially on the cusp of this new year and our changing climes. I invite you to trust and follow your energy, wherever it leads.
You will need your Nature journal, this letter with its poems and prompts and some time out in Nature - what we often refer to as our "neck of the woods". If you're unable to visit your Nature spot, please just step outside, or you could even open a window.
Once you've settled and are comfortable, begin by inhaling slowly and deeply through your nose. Every breath is a new beginning! Notice the air as it passes through your nostrils and your throat. Notice how your breath is a wave that fills your lungs, and moves your body. As you inhale visualize quiet and midwinter entering you.
Next, exhale slowly through your mouth. Notice how your exhalation leaves your body. Visualize your body relaxing into the quiet between each breath. Take your time through four of these breaths. Feel Nature filling you. With each inhalation and exhalation, you express the Nature you are. Linger here.
When you feel complete and inspired, please read “Quiet Time” aloud to your neck of the woods. Please take your time and please read it twice. Nature will appreciate your offering. I promise!
Spend some time in deep listening and receptivity. Listen, not just with your ears, but with your mouth and nose. With your tongue and skin. Listen with your heart and intuition. Who or what is responding to you? Notice how quiet welcomes you and wraps you in her stillness. Feel yourself "...rest in all of Nature."
Throughout your PON year, whenever you need it, use this simple meditation to commune with the quiet part of you that endures.
“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
~ William Butler Yeats
Quiet time is...
I trust you enjoyed the quiet meditation and that its given you space to center in the spirit of quiet. Now, I invite you to grab your Nature journal and play with a couple of poem making prompts. As you scribe, contemplate what quiet time is for you and how it shows up in your life right now. Feel free to write to one, both or neither sentence stem. If there’s energy tugging you in a different direction, trust and honor that!
First, revisit Wood’s poem. Let her feelings and imagery awaken you as you free write to this sentence stem:
It is our (my) quiet time…
Free writes are fun resources for poems. To free write, set a timer for 10 minutes. Once you begin writing, keep your hand moving across the page. Let your writing flow intuitively. Resist the urge to pause, to cross out, or correct yourself. No one ever needs to see your free write! If you don't know what to write, say, "I don't know what to write." Muses can't resist this!
For you second prompt I invite you to try playing with metaphor. By using “is” and directly relating quiet to something else that is unrelated, you are creating metaphor.
Quiet time is...
Quiet time is...
Quiet time is...
You could try listing this sentence stem quickly 10 times. Then, writing intuitively, complete each sentence stem. Again, keep your hand moving. Writing like this can whisk you past your censor and put you directly in touch with your muse.
As your responses to these sentence stems feel complete, notice what sings to you. Feel free to dive into poem making. Alternately, you could let your free write and/or metaphors marinate for a time while you contemplate how quiet manifests for you.
Geoff and I look forward to reading your poems. Every poem you share makes us all stronger! Please reply to this email to share your quiet poems with to us.
Three Little Lines – The Art of Haiku and Senryu
For PON 2025 I promised you an optional monthly prompt for haiku and senryu. For our final possible prompt this month, we'll begin with basics.
Simply put, haiku and senryu are unrhymed, usually untitled, three line Japanese poems generally (although not always) written in a 5/7/5 syllable form. Haiku possess a kigo which is a seasonal term, like "harvest moon". Haiku capture the essence and beauty of nature. And something of it's deep underlying quietness. In this haiku, I am celebrating autumn:
harvest moon
night’s presence, rainy days
and puddle gazing
Senryu relate more to human nature and can often express emotions. They can be commentaries. They can contain surprises, joy, irony, humor, hyperbole, awe, parody and many other things. Senryu do not include a kigo.
adventure awaits
nature begins with your breath
mountains live in you
For you third prompt I invite you to continue your midwinter quiet contemplation. What do you observe? What emotions are present? Colors? What are you craving? Is there something seasonal that's special to your neck of the woods that is calling you? What is the weather like? What plant, animal or other Being is present? Is there something about your human nature that is speaking to you, like the inner voices in Wood's poem.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps like us, you yearn for quiet and inner and outer stillness. Perhaps you feel ready to lead a more spacious, mindful and meaningful life. Your body is begging to be listened to. You are being called to live by heart and mind, body and soul. Poetry-writing and sensitivity to the natural world are open portals to this more soulful aliveness.
We welcome and invite your shared Nature experiences. These connections guide us to our feelings, our wildness. This is the most important time in our existence to be doing this healing work.
Finally, we're pleased to announce a new PON feature for 2025. Please read on for "Geoff's Den"! This month Geoff introduces us to bear and the power of song.
May the Forest Be With You!
NanLeah
“When you bring your attention to a stone, a tree or an animal, something of its essence transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is and in doing so the same stillness rises within you. You can sense how deeply it rests in being, completely one with what it is and where it is, in realizing this, you too come to a place or rest deep within yourself.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
Geoff's Den for February 2025
Dear PON Friends,
This year I’ll include this feature, titled Geoff’s Den, in some of NanLeah’s monthly letters.
For our first group of the year, I want to begin with Bear, and song.
I’ve never seen a Bear in the wild, but over the years they’ve shown up in my dreams. Ever wonder why Teddy Bears are so well-beloved? Why they accompany so many children into sleep?
In many Native American tribes, Bears are associated with dreams… and healing.
According to David Rockwell’s book Giving Voice to Bear: North American Indian Myths, Rituals, and Images of the Bear:
"Nearly all the plains tribes considered shamans with bear power to be the greatest healers of all. The list includes the Lakota, Yanktonai, Assiniboin, Pawnee, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Ponca, Mandan, Arapaho, and Iowa. The Eastern woodland and prairie tribes that employed shamans’ bear power included the Potawatomi, Winnebago, Huron, Fox, Cree and Ojibwa. In the southwest, the Pueblo word for shamans who cured the sick was the same as the word for bear."
Please understand that the above tribal groups spent thousands of years in situations in which it was necessary to their survival to closely observe, attune to and reverently receive the beneficent powers of plant and animal beings living around them. Their reverence for Bear came from ages of direct experience with its heavy-duty power to heal, to aid in hunting and herb-gathering, and to potentiate dreaming.
I’ve received Bear teachings from a friend and elder of the Canadian Cree over the years. In need of steadying in the wild wake of recent political events, I felt drawn to Bear Power and received this healing song, the “Four Bear Healing Chant.” The melody came all at once, the words followed a little more slowly. My wife and I have sung it a lot in the past few months. It brightens and lifts us.
Tamed by a Bear, Coming Home to Nature, Spirit, Self by Priscilla Stuckey, is the heart-opening story of the author’s profoundly healing communion with Bear. There’s much wisdom in it. Leslie and I loved it.
You might want to deepen your communion with some of the Plant or Animal Powers you most relate to during our Poetry of Nature groups this year. If you do, consider song as a time-honored way to connect with them. This can really happen.
In his book The Real Work, Interviews and Talks 1964-1979, the poet Gary Snyder addresses the question, “As you see it, what is the function of poetry?” answering:
"You ask me what is the function of poetry so I think, ‘What is the function of poetry since 40,000 years ago?’ In all cultures of the world—total planetary overview. And in that sense the function of poetry is not only the intensification and clarification of the inherent potentials of the language, which means a sharpening, a bringing of more delight to the normal functions of language and making maybe language even work better since communication is what it’s all about. But on another level poetry is intimately linked to any culture’s fundamental worldview, body of lore, which is its myth base, its symbol base, and the source of much of its values—that myth-lore foundation that underlies any society. That foundation is most commonly expressed and transmitted in the culture by poems, which is to say by songs. By songs that are linked to a dramatic or ritual performance much of the time. The oral tradition almost always puts its transmission into the form of measured language, which is much easier to remember and can be chanted. Much of the world’s lore has been transmitted, in one form or another, via poetic forms, measured language or sung language."
Song sounds spring from the body, from the heart, stirring air and ear and soma more tangibly and directly than written language can. We’ve been singing and chanting a lot longer than we’ve been making clay tablets, scrolls and books. I’ll share some of my songs with you this year as one very venerable mode of energetic, poetic expression.
Have you written songs? Heard songs in your Mind’s Ear? See if sometime you might invite, conceive and/or receive a simple song or chant from some aspect of Nature you feel in rapport with. Then sing it. It may change as you do so. It may change you as you do so.
It may charge you as you do so.
It’s snowing hard here in NW Arkansas and throughout the Ozark bioregion as I write this from the warmth of my Den, sending you all
Warm Blessings,
Geoff O
“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!”
~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson
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