The Silence Of Wild Places

Mill Creek Campground, 

Northern California

After two days of driving,

feeling odd and out of sorts,

finally camping, I craved

to know the silence of wild places.

That afternoon I put my ear to the forest floor,

listening for the rumble of Creation

only to come face to face 

with a bright yellow five-inch banana slug,

shouting to all the world,

Here I am.

Its eye stalks moved right and left,

up and down, independent of one another.

Its lower tentacles sniffed for food,

scraped into its mouth by its toothy tongue.

Down here it seemed so much larger

(along with everything else),

a little creepy but not so menacing.

It wasn’t intimidated by whatever

light and shadow I resembled.

It moved silently and fearlessly

over the forest debris.

That night, while gazing

at the mass of the Milky Way,

I thought the one thing I would like

to see before I died would be a supernova.

Yet I was astonished that the most elegant

thing I saw that day was the banana slug

and the reservoir of silence 

that was the forest floor.

From: Memories And The Things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 16