“Nearer to the earth's heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

 

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens:

Their seamless presence

Is not fractured thus.

 

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking out from

The here and now.

 

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us.

 

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

 

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

 

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind

And the light and the rain.”

 

To Learn From Animal Being

by John O'Donohue