The Angel’s Bower

A Prayer for the Earth

Walking in the woods the other morning, I saw what could have only been an angel’s bower.

Softened by golden lichen and hairy moss, and dipped in arched sunlight, just so, the cross-laid branches seemed to glow from within, perhaps because of the heavenly touch of last night’s dreamy occupant.

I could plainly see the spot where her wings had draped over ancient logs as she spun her dreams, all the dark night long, until they were broken by a sunbeam reaching from above to gild her unearthly face, caressing her with nature’s love.

Did she pray when she woke, when her eyes first opened to the hushed and dripping world?

Did she offer hope to humanity’s plight? To our suffering? Or for the damage we have unfurled upon the earth?

Or, rather, was her intent, perhaps, of a bigger sort, the sort that sees beyond the moment, beyond the blink of an eye, in which we humans have walked the earth, the sort of sight which sees both future and past, and knows that Gaia will last another eternity after we are gone?

Was her song then for the earth?

Maybe for a vision of the loamy dirt redolent with the decay of thousands of years of fallen growth, fed back into the soil where nature’s tiny creatures toil to rebuild?

Or for the “could-be’s” of tomorrow, long after we transgressors are gone, for the cycle of life which carries on in the blink of an angel’s eye.

This poem came to me, all in a rush, after a hike through Silver Falls, Oregon. In the heavenly hush of the sacred silence, I came across this clearing where the trees had fallen, just so, and looked to me, so much like a heavenly bower.

Places like these tug at my soul and make me long for the wild, untouched parts of the planet, and for their safety from mankind’s unkind touch.

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Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her lamazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

Poem and photo ©Erika Burkhalter.