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 riverbed, 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."

"Sleeping In The Forest"

Mary Oliver

Poet extraordinaire

Snippets and Thread Tales 

With Heart and Hands from Michele:

And so we all return to life as we know it. We take deep breaths to center and ground ourself to the earth, we walk among the green things, under a canopy of trees.

We bid a final goodbye to someone we loved, now gone, and return our focus to the living, our families, and all that we yet need to do in this world before we too depart to sleeping in our own forests of our own beliefs, our own making.

I hold my young and very young grandchildren close, I read to them, make puzzles, draw and color, we play with toys their parents once played with.

I've learned to merge the past, present, and prepare them for the future. Just as all their parents do.

We have lots and lots of love and joy among life's challenges and sadnesses.

I look for and still can find peace.

And for that I am so truly grateful.  

Michele Bilyeu Creates *With Heart and Hands

Making Peace any Prayer Flags

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, from my heart and with my hands