The Mad Farmer's Wife Learns of Forest Bathing
She would have loved a creek bath but didn't dare,only chuckled at the saucy thought.That wasn't what the term meant anyway.In Japan it's called shinrin yokuher daughter said, forest bathing,where you go to the woods to renewto soothe, to relax, to change on the inside.
Country people had always just called it walking.
Striking out across uneven groundthe fat trees welcome us, whisperinga breathless hello.Our feet drink from the heavy dewwash the soul clean,breezes erasing the worldand its cash out of our eyes.Branches clap their approval—take a bow.
We pulse along, a kind of wind ourselves,stop under a red maple veilin a wedding tent of sleepy poplars,xylem and cambium rooting usto a wildness of spiritas the rooted ones wave us on. [End Page 66]
Rita Sims Quillen's novel Wayland, a sequel to Hiding Ezra, was published by Iris Press in 2019 and her poetry collection Some Notes You Hold is due out from Madville Press in 2020. Her 2016 full-length poetry collection, The Mad Farmer's Wife, was a finalist for the Weatherford Award in Appalachian Literature.
