Tag: poetry

We trek to a place of solitude,
this lonely place, to sit,
to listen to the water, to the wind, to the silence:
the silence speaks to us as we walk, as we sit.

And in this lonely place the loneliness drains from us –
from our arms, our legs, our beating hearts –
richness fills us:
the voices of the pines, the balsam, and the birch
which call out to us in the wind.
Gentle, the breeze ruffles the needles, the leaves.

We have searched – endlessly –
for this place:
for the solitude that is in loneliness,
for the depth that is boundless,
without form.

Here, the emptiness fills us,
completes us.

—Mary Elyn Bahlert, “At Solitude Swale,” Door County, Wisconsin, 5/2025

At Solitude Swale, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May 25, 2025

In the gray morning –
still –
beneath the earth,
beneath the moving waters,
a voice, a heartbeat stirs.

The ancient stirs, also:
breathes its life into us,
those of us who walk here.

Beneath the chatter of our bitter minds
something stirs:

the Heartbeat of it all.

• poem by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 5/2025, at The Ridges

Photo credit to Mary Elyn Bahlert

As the morning breaks and
the sky clears into light,
we move along the path, deep into the darkness
of the trees.

We stop, then.
Our breath stops.
The birds stop their morning chatter, too.

A holy silence holds us.

and – the path comes alive as we move again, our footsteps
on this precious earth:
this Giver of All,
this Holy Mistress.

—Mary Elyn Bahlert, at Ridges Sanctuary, 2025