Nature Journaling and Poetry

International Nature Journaling Week 2021 starts with the prompt „words“. Especially poetry is an often neglected element in our nature journals.

I wrote this poem inspired by a leaf I found using directly or indirectly the prompts „I notice, I wonder, It reminds me of“ and „Maybe“ which Emilie Lygren added in her workshop during this first day:

A Leaf I Found

I noticed you somewhere
on the forest floor –
lines and shadows and
a little hole.
The grey-brown shape like the tree
you belong to.
His tiny twigs like your life lines
written by time and weather.

I wonder how the world appears through
your little hole –
will it change my view of things,
my view of myself?

Maybe it is like looking through
a caleidoscope for the first time.
Do you you feel the wonder, the joy of the child?
Everything changing,
everything finding a new place,
a new order emerging and
everything starting all over again.

Like growth and change in this leaf,
a part from the oaktree
changing from first green
to green of May,
from dusty shadows to light of fall,
to the warmth of red to the cold of grey
and green again.

I notice you on the
branches above me –
first little green fingers unfolding,
stretching out to the sun –
the changing seasons are
my caleidoscope of wonder now.

© 01.06.2021 Christiane Weismüller

Tipp

More about poetry in the nature journal you can read in my blogpost Nature Journaling and Haiku.