A Poetic Response to our Occult Relationship with the Vegetable as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Give me the Forest

give me the forest

the whispers

the wind

where only the keening call of the morrow

dare break the sacred calm of the sylvan now

the ritual of the soaring hum

give me the forest

the neglected

the free

where there are no rules

but the rooting scrawls of the cloven beast

unearthing pagan creeds

blasphemous guides to the dark

to the place where all the fears are found

all the magic

give me the forest

the sanctified

the holy

where the haunted howls of midnight

call to worship

to prayer

all the pious and profane

all the naked unbelievers who mock the baptismal of the moon

give me the forest

the ancient

the eternal

where the tattered persona is stripped away

ripped away and hung from the treetops

desperate semaphore signals for the dire

the damned

where the anima dances on fresh laid graves

sodden with tears of the holy

the helpless