Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond by Mary Oliver

So heavy
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, 
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open

and she turns

from the thick water,

from the black sticks

of the summer pond, 

and slowly

rises into the air

and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,

I take the deep breath

of happiness, and I think

how unlikely it is 

that death is a hole in the ground, 

how improbable

that ascension is not possible,

though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself--

the muskrat and his lumpy lodge, 

the turtle, 

the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful

that the summers are long

and the ponds so dark and so many, 

and therefore it isn't a miracle

but the common thing,

this decision,

this trailing of the long legs in the water, 

this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden

gray-blue sheets of her wings

strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing

takes her in. 

poem in praise of menstruation by Lucille Clifton

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood 
red edge of the moon          if 

there is a river 
more faithful than this
returning each month 
to the same delta                 if there 

is a river 
braver than this 
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain               if there is 

a river 
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel             if there is in 

the universe such a river           if 
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water
pray that it flows also 
through animals 
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave

Lost by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, 
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, 
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

The Myth of Innocence by Louise Glück

One summer she goes into the field as usual
stopping for a bit at the pool where she often
looks at herself, to see 
if she detects any changes. She sees
the same person, the horrible mantle
of daughterliness still clinging to her.

The sun seems, in the water, very close.

That's my uncle spying again, she thinks-

everything in nature is in some way her relative.

I am never alone, she thinks, 

turning the thought into a prayer.

Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

No one understands anymore

how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.

Also that he embraced her, right there, 

with her uncle watching. She remembers

sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This is the last moment she remembers clearly.

Then the dark god bore her away.

She also remembers, less clearly,

the chilling insight that from this moment

she couldn't live without him again.

The girl who disappears from the pool

will never return. A woman will return,

looking for the girl she was.

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,

I was abducted, but it sounds

wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.

Then she says, I was not abducted.

Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted

to escape my body. Even, sometimes,

I willed this. But ignorance

cannot will knowledge. Ignorance

wills something imagined, which it believes exists.

All the different nouns-

she says them in rotation.

Death, husband, god, stranger.

Everything sounds so simple, so conventional.

I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.

She can't remember herself as that person

but she keeps thinking the pool will remember

and explain to her the meaning of her prayer

so she can understand

whether it was answered or not.

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

(Chapter 7 - miniature - II)

I shall first take a fragment from Cyrano de Bergerac, which is quoted in a very fine article by Pierre-Maxime Schuhl; entitled Le thème de Gulliver et le postulat de Laplace. Here the author is led to accentuate the intellectualist nature of Cyrano de Bergerac's amused images in order to  compare them with this astronomer-mathematician's ideas.  
The Cyrano text is the following: "This apple is a little universe in itself, the seed of which, being hotter than the other parts, gives out the conserving heat of its globe; and this germ, in my opinion, is the little sun of this little world, that warms and ffed the vegetative salt of this little mass."

The Poetics of Space, The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, Gaston Bachelard  

The Stolen Child by W. B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island 
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand, 
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses,

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand, 
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Gives them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand, 
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,

The solemn-eyed:

He'll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside 

Or the kettle on the hob

Since peace into his breast, 

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal chest, 

For he comes the human child,

To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand, 
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

The Old Timer by Chris Black

He stood leaning across the wooden fencing
drinking in the bright multi-colours of a field in full
bloom. A field festooned with wild flowers, purple,
red and orange, in fact all colours of the rainbow
and then some.

 Years of hard graft and now a comfort in old

age, flowers were his passion, whether growing

wild or in his hothouses. People came from far and 

near to purchase shrubs, potted plants, flowers to

adorn graves, wedding bouquets, and blooms for

all occasions. Return visitors year-on-year placed

orders for ceremonies in graveyards throughout

the county and bordering counties. His personality 

was an attraction as much as his flowers.

 Living alone and ageing, the business was 

becoming not so much a burden as a hobby. As

well as earning him a good living, it gave him

something to get up for each breaking dawn. The

arthritis, now that was a problem. His hands were

beginning to stiffen up. All the bending and

stooping was playing on his mind. He was also 

becoming more forgetful day by day, which was

frustrating. Leave something out of his hand he'd

spend half an hour looking for it, only to find he 

planted it earlier.

 It was getting close to decision time. No one 

could make the decision for him. People could give

him all the advice they wanted but, at the end of 

the day, he had to make the final choice. So there

he was leaning across the wooden fence pondering

his life or what there was left of it. What should 

he do? Where would he go? One sure fact, he could

not stay around and see the business bought and

then raised to the ground. Or watch people come

and go on a daily basis, purchasing his flowers as 

though nothing had changed.

 House and property went on the market as a 

single lot. A chapter of his life was closed. The 

thought of it was breaking his heart. What had he 

to look forward to? A future without flower gardens

to tend was not something he ever anticipated;

now it was quickly becoming a reality. Feeling tired

and emotional, he retired for one last night in his 

home.

 They placed a wreath of flowers from his 

beloved gardens on his grave, two days after the 

sale.