Ross L. Andrews

Wild Peace

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(For my mother)

I am grateful,
so grateful,
for my life,
I am a raw human who knows how to be whole,

I am a curly-haired child walking over piedmont hills,
brushing against rounded white oak lobes,
by myself, but not alone.

Captivated by buttressed trunks and carpeted ravines,
traversing the slippery bark balance of fallen logs,
imagining the living space among rooted brown earth
and light floating leaves falling at my feet

I will always be there,
exploring creek edges and following fence-lines,
crunching and climbing to find the sheltered natural
rooms
framed by branches and
stone where I could
b e h o l d
the dancing beings of cedar,
the towering reach of oak and beech
cycles of green to copper leaves
that shape the vessel of my soul-

I finally know how I am to live-
to fill my soul with awe,
to live in wild peace.

In memory of Marjorie Hare Andrews 1945-2006.

 

ROSS L. ANDREWS

Sequoia

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When you stand before a colossal wall
of reddish brown
a mass of tree bigger than any you’ve ever seen-
bigger than any living thing,
bigger than houses,
far bigger than ourselves,

It becomes more than
an experience of human and tree.

When you listen to the wind curl through rounded
needle clusters and gaze up 100 feet
to the lowest branch,
awestruck eyes looking towards the sky,
I glance at my wife, her hand resting on soft tree-fur

It becomes more than
an experience of natural wonder.

When you lean against two-foot deep fluted bark,
and a fire-carved cave engulfs you at it’s base –
it is beyond any wildness you’ve ever felt,
beyond any idea of nature you’ve ever known,

It becomes more than
an experience of the wild Sierra.

When you see the ribbed and egg-shaped cone
a seed light as nothing like an oatmeal flake
smaller than the baby in my arms
smaller than seeds of lesser eastern trees,

It becomes more than a moment outside-

Away from the crisis-call of our modern lives,
away from highways and comparing ourselves to
others, away from achievement and failure,

It becomes a sacred moment lost to modern thought-

when you realize these plants were living,
breathing, green flesh at the time of Christ’s birth,
these apostles of creation

What does it become,
you, standing there beside this tree,
a 3,000 year old 40 foot wide Giant Sequoia?

It becomes a greeting with God on earth,
An invitation to wonder
and a chance
to believe.

July 2003

ROSS L. ANDREWS

In God in Nature Alone

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The vast murmur of the treetops
God’s breath
a stirring inhalation
releases a thunderous power
gleaming in the eyesHis headdress glistens against the sun
the wind speaks
the force of all humanity,
God and nature as one

Alive in the eagle’s scream
a young man’s laughter,
a sweet and quieting roar
settles over the field
as the transparent moon
lost in depths of blue
gazes down on me

i return to you
your shifting cedars
stroke my heart
i move with you
your rounding hills
pull me in with excitement

i return to you, alone
i revel in the warmth of our aloneness
i know the presence in this form
i live your presence in my form
with each step nearer the center,
closer to you

i dance up the broomsedge pasture
cedars shed their sweet scent,
their greenness rises before me
as dusklight crests above the hill

striking fire, my eyes thrust
like a driven arrow
within the shimmering grass

I stand as an ancestral oak
dignified, stable ’round jutting rock
with haunting grandeur,
a timeless presence
a grounding wisdom

Limbs and arms stretch to the sky-
a bolt of lightning,
a burning communion:
the glow of life,
blazing in this gentle wind.

We embrace and share every breath,

my heart remains

wrapped in golden tufts

kissing forest lips

I return to you
I live within you

In God in nature alone.

March 1996

ROSS L. ANDREWS