Lebanese-American poet and naturalist Jack Phillips revels in the ancient sacredness, wisdom, and romanticism of wild places in his earthy-yet-ethereal “What We Learn in the Woods”. Steeped in the nourishing and holy virtues of nature, Jack introduces readers to a wilderness which is not aloof, harsh, and brutal, but instead loving, healing, and abundantly wise.
What We Learn in the Woods
Dogmas and dharmas of bygone messiahs shamans would-be bodhisattvas preachers and seers ancients of days
and dervishes, fixed facades of stiffened dominion but all of it thins in breaking light and in these woods
beyond every shadow we are stretched with the same skin — tissues of dawn over ancient bones — wild-in-love Wisdom plays her estrus in rutting and vixens in oak and hickory we
(in this moment) are favorites, mossy fingers cupping faces, scent on breathy breezes, her lips on ours for vernal kisses.
Jack Phillips
Jack Phillips is a Lebanese-American naturalist, poet, nature writer and founder of The Naturalist School, a nonprofit organization devoted to connecting with nature more deeply through creativity and deep encounters with wild nature. He is a Pushcart nominee, poetry editor of Magpie Zine and author of The Bur Oak Manifesto: Seeking Nature and Planting Trees in the Great Plains and co-editor of Treasures of the Great Plains: an Ecological Perspective, and other publications. His poetry has appeared in Hymn and Howl, Wild Roof, EcoTheo, Canary: a Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis, The Good Life Review, The Closed Eye Open, Saffron City and elsewhere. He lives in the Missouri River watershed of eastern Nebraska and teaches clinical ecopsychology at Creighton University School of Medicine.
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