The Greatest Nature Poem Ever

after Brian Doyle

In the late Brian Doyle’s final essay collection, One Long River of Song, there’s an essay titled “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever”. And it is a great essay, full of things that a great nature essay should include. And that title makes a good launch pad for a new bit of writing, and it’s one of our prompts for February in Writing the Wild. And since Brian Doyle already wrote the great nature essay ever, I shall offer you…..

The Greatest Nature Poem Ever

..starts with bold statements, declarations

of appreciative love for wildness of all sorts—

biting ants & jumping spiders

beach grass & bent twigs

shifting sand & falling raindrops,

(these declarations can be more subtle than bold, really, it can go either way)

anyone willing to acknowledge their place

in that wild family of things, and let’s not forget

a robust description of wind dancing through ripples on still waters

or the way a full moon casts shadows of illumination on snowcapped hills

along with enough left unsaid to keep imagination alive in wonder—

that love, however it presents itself, paves the way,

but not like a road through woods—

more like a trickle of water molding rock over eons, a steady presence

making itself known, persistent in its unrelenting reach, its unwavering way

of continuing to be, year

after year

after year,

reminding everything

that everything is a part

of nature’s universal heart.

It keeps going after that, becoming more itself

every time you, and you, and you, too, take that love

(bold or not)

and make it your own—because you, too

are an essential part of the greatest nature poem ever.