"Thank You" Instead of "Please"

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. - Thoreau

i went where i sought not to go

sticking my hand in the murky river, stirring the water and splashing some over my head because i was hot

cawing my displeasures with the crows

clucking unease with the chickens

hunting with the hawk

gnawing felled wood with the beavers

walking with the turkeys as i stuck out my bobbing neck

shaking a tambourine with the woodpeckers

and rubbing a nightly guiro with the crickets

scurrying about nervously with squirrels and chipmunks

i let the changing colors of early, fall leaves paint the canvas of my soul

as i inhaled cool, crisp, clean, autumn air

wearing fine french fashion as the acorn beret

hearing and feeling their released crunch 'neath my swollen, aging feet

i buzzed sweet honey with the bees

hugging and looking up to the trees

i prayed with the mantises down upon my knees

and that has made all the difference

needing not reasons or explanations

but simply able to say, "thank you" instead of, "please"

Author's Note

“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-cost with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”