Tag: Nature

There is a thing…

May 24, 2023 / Tom

There is a thing, but it is just a thing. It’s one of many things which are like drops of water that have combined to flow as a river. Still this is a big thing.

Yet aren’t they all big things? Every toe stub, every fall, every tear that falls seems to be a big thing in the moment of their arrival. We focus on the droplet and bitch about its temperature as if it is the only droplet in the river. It is the thing after all, the very thing we’ve been dreading and the very thing we’ve tried to avoid.

Damn, I’ve been so stupid. I’ve spend so much of my life so focused on the droplet that I’ve failed to see the river. So much time has been focused on the wounds that I’ve missed the healthy parts. What the hell have I been doing? Wasting my time with fools and frailty has caused me to sacrifice the only thing that has ever truly mattered.

No, for now on I’ll revel in the soreness just as I bask in the comfort. The sadness will be let go just as the joy will be. I will swim and laugh and enjoy the river and honor each and every drop as equal parts of the same stream. I will fucking love it all, even the parts I detest the most.

Ultimately there is a thing and we all have it in common. We live and in that life we will die. What we do with the thing is our choice, and how we do it is our power.

Yeah, I love this thing.

The Winter is Coming (A Poem)

September 25, 2020 / Tom

Winds announce the coming freeze,
There is a rustling among the trees,
Their leaves now old, about to fall,
Will always answer nature’s call.

Man now grown, forgot the sound,
Tone deaf to life around,
Nothing more than a fearful child,
Ignoring calls to walk the wild.

Yet he who came to Nature’s breast,
Would love the fierce, ignore the rest,
When Winter comes his footprints know,
He was born to leave them in the snow.

The Autumn seeks to end his youth,
Turn what was young to aged truth,
Still he rises to walk some more,
And forget the path he’s walked before.

Alone he’ll sleep under the stars,
Dream of love that’s healed his scars,
He’ll love the places still in pain,
And know his Soul in Autumn rain.

It was in the Autumn he saw the end,
As Winter waited around the bend,
But now he smiles at what he sees,
For he’s just a leaf among the trees.

~Tom Grasso (25 Sept 2020)

The Walden Pond Within (A Poem)

December 9, 2019 / Tom

I heard a calling once,

The woods, the hills, the simple life,

A small area to call my own.

A devoted hand fearlessly in mine,

A shared dream,

Creating words in the woods,

Stories born in the space between

The soil and the sky,

Living clean, without the nonsense of the lost human mind.

I heard a poem once,

A walk through nature by a heart so inclined,

Footprints left on the earthen soil,

Wiped cleaned by the whipping winds of time,

Still the words imprinted on the sweetest parchment,

Eternally mine to hold, to cherish,

To share to the ones who come calling.

My friends, alive among the trees.

I read a story once,

A man in love with the truth of Walden,

He and I have sipped from the same cup,

Bent our knee upon the same muddy shore,

We’ve written songs only the loon can hope to sing.

Together we have made our stand,

In union we have found the space of our truest love,

Our tears flow as we leave her far behind.

We never truly leave her at all.

I hear the calling now,

Recite the poem in my heart,

Tell the story in my soul,

I see the cabin where we live,

An orange flicker of the fire where we lay,

All we need around us, in us, between us,

A simplicity we’ve birthed in the honor on which we stand,

Two souls warm in the company we have found,

Even as the snows falls out there.

We kiss, forever, here.

Nature (A Poem)

July 9, 2018 / Tom

To feel the vibrations of Nature’s song…

The smell of Her forgotten pines,

Eternity encapsulated in the droplets of cool mists,

As water falls,

As Her sweat sprays against the rocky mounds of Her exuberance.

The soil beneath your feet never quite the same.

I’ve heard the calling of Her ecstasy,

As the song birds greet the arrival of the Sun,

As man stirs in his unconsciousness,

Distorting Her truth with the lies of his existence.

Though I falter, I hear the beckoning of Her breezes,

Tried and true I stand beside Her majesty,

Bruised, but sure to the task for which I was born,

To climb, to fall, to bleed upon Her fertile soil.

Forgotten the truest womb a babe has ever known,

The willows weeping their joy and I cry beside them,

She knows no bounds in Her acceptance,

And no judgements of misguided expectations of survival.

Hold this tired form, swaddled nicely in the torrents of despair,

Her rapids flowing beside me,

The sounds deafening me to the point where I can finally hear

That howl that rages deep inside me.

Tear away these shrouds, and leave me naked in the field somewhere,

I beg you, bleed me of the humanity bestowed on me from birth,

Rugged, let me know the steadiest of stones

As I seek my way downward once again.