Mother and Father Nature

The crew men thank her

Then lay down their oily blanket.

Hands all over the inland forest

In a striking motion trees fall down

Like dying soldiers…”

Soundgarden, Hands all Over

When the moon rises and illuminates the magnolia branch in the winter forest, Father Nature comes with icy breath to drape the bark in a glass case, covering it from disease. In the mid-summer heat, in a field of pigweed and poison oak, Mother Nature lifts the newborn fawn from the gnashing maw of the farmers combine and places her in a shady spot by the river, within sight of her birth mother.  In an old oil painting above the hearth in some country abode, while the fox makes a mad dash over the fallen log, trailed behind by a dozen riders in red and their yelping foxhounds, it is Father Nature who places the burrow in front of the fox to make a hiding place. When the lightning strikes the mountain and lifts the spirits of three hundred stricken dragonflies from their mortal bodies, it is Mother Nature who takes them home and refills their bodies, and plants them in the clouds so that, with the next rainstorm, their souls can return to earth to dart above the racing river. The last thought that man will ever have will be a vision, a picture as if in a dream, the face of mother and father nature, holding their precious creatures and humming like a giant catfish, singing the prayer that beetles sing beneath the soil.

← Previous Next →