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:
With lines and shadows and
a little hole.
The grey-brown shape like the tree
you belong to.
His branches like your life lines
written by time and weather.

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

Maybe it is like
looking through a caleidoscope
for the first time:
How I wondered, how glad I was!
Everything changing,
everything finding a new place,
a new order emerging and
everything starting all over again.

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