Sleeping in the Forest
Sleeping in the Forest - meaning Summary
Sleep as Self-renewal
The poem imagines sleep in the forest as a surrender of the separate self to the living earth. The speaker feels tenderly received by nature and becomes aware of insects, birds, waterlike motion, and the stars. Repeatedly "vanishing" suggests a temporary release from ordinary identity, ending in renewal rather than fear.
Read Complete AnalysesI thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.
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