Listen With Your Heart

For many of us, and as I have written before, autumn is a season that sparks restlessness and the urge to explore. It brings the kinds of days that are well described in a line from a favorite childhood book, Champion Dog, Prince Tom, ( paraphrased since I can't remember the exact words)...days that make you feel as though you could "walk across the top of the world without getting tired". And these days bring to mind a poem that I have been reciting to myself for almost than 30 years now, a poem I came across in a British magazine while living in Botswana in the late 1970's. I hope you enjoy it and even more, take it to heart.

Listen With Your Heart (Edna Jaques)
Go out, go out I beg of you,

And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of Earth
With all the wonder of a child.
Walk hand in hand with nature's God
Where scarlet lilies brightly flame.
Make footprints in the virgin sod
By some clear lake without a name.

Listen not only with your ears,
But make your heart a listening post.

Travel above the timber line,
Make fires along some lonely coast.
Breathe the high air of snow-crowned peaks,
Taste fog and kelp and salty tides.
Go pitch your tent among the pines
Where golden sun and peace abide.

Follow the trail of moose and deer,
The wild goose on her lonely flight.
Savor the fragrance of the wild,
The sweetness of a northern night.
Drink deep of distance, rest your eyes
Where centuries of peace have lain.
And let your thoughts go winging out,
Beyond the realm of man's domain.

Lay hold upon the out-of-doors
With heart and soul and seeking brain.
You'll find the answers to all life
Held in the sun and wind and rain.
Where'er you walk, by land or sea,
The page is clear for all who seek.
If you will listen with your heart
And let the voice of nature speak.