Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

-Mary Oliver

Since I'm a late-comer to the world of blogging and all the good blog names are taken, I decided to rely on my favorite poet, Mary Oliver, to supply the memorable quotations that frame my page. The address of this blog is "asmallgreenangel," which originates from another Oliver poem, "Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine." I have, for many years, felt honored when I caught a glimpse of a hummingbird. When I read that poem I thought it was lovely. Apparently hummingbirds only occur in the Americas and so the mythology surrounding them comes solely from Native American tribes. The sketchy information I gleaned from the web indicated that some tribes believe hummingbirds are messengers from the gods, i.e. angels.