Sunlight in the Forest

Deep in the gloom of a northern rain forest
a shaft of sunlight illuminates a moss-covered tree trunk and ferns.

I need to go on a vision quest...

In the very earliest time
when both people and animals lived together on earth,
a person could become an animal if she wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen--
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That was the way it was.
--Nalungiaq

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object she looked upon, that object she became...
--Walt Whitman

the Light in the Grass,
the Wind on the Hill,
are in my head,
the world cannot be heard
Leaves obliterate
my heart...
--Adrienne Riche

There in the middle of the forest is the cave
And there, curled up inside it, is the fox.
She stands looking at it.
Around her the fields are sleeping: the fields dream.
At night there are no more farmers, no more farms.
At night the fields dream they are the long-gone forest.
The girl stands looking at the fox
As if, if she looked long enough...
She looks at it--
Or is it the fox looking at the girl?
The trees can't tell the two of them apart.
--Randall Jarrell

A vague mist hanging 'round half the pages:
Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,
That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,
non-realities.

--Walt Whitman