Looking Down

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."
Henry David Thoreau

As beautiful as any Persian rug,

as richly textured as any scultpure,

as soft as a pillow

earth does not sleep in winter.

Warm Winter at Lake Cheston

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light.

. . . I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor . . .



Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?



[E]very leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden