[Editor’s note: This week’s entry comes from Johhny Cash. That’s right, the Man in Black. The song itself is, of course, an old traditional whose author has been lost to us. The poetry in this piece comes in the prayer of Johnny’s spoken-word introduction. I don’t know if these are his own words, or those of the anonymous cowboy. But they send shivers down my spine every time I hear them. They are written in the plain Christian idiom of his tradition, but they also speak more broadly to the spirit of natural patriotism. Sixth in a series.]
Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie
Traditional, interpreted by Johhny Cash
Lord, I’ve never lived where churches grow.
I loved creation better as it stood
that day you finished it so long ago
and looked upon your work and called it good.
I know that others find you in the light
that sifted down through tinted window panes.
And yet I seem to feel you near tonight
in this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.
I thank you, Lord, that I’m placed so well
that you’ve made my freedom so complete
that I’m no slave to whistle, clock or bell,
nor weak-eyed prisoner of Wall or Street.
Just let me live my life as I’ve begun
and give me work that’s open to the sky.
Make me a partner of the wind and sun
and I won’t ask a life that’s soft or high.
Let me be easy on the man that’s down.
Let me be square and generous with all.
I’m careless sometimes, Lord, when I’m in town
but never let them say I’m mean or small.
Make me as big and open as the plains
and honest as the horse between my knees,
clean as a wind that blows behind the rains,
free as the hawk that circles down the breeze.
Forgive me, Lord, if sometimes I forget –
You know about the reasons that are hid.
You understand the things that gall or fret.
Well, you knew me better than my mother did.
Just keep an eye on all that’s done or said
and right me sometimes when I turn aside.
And guide me on that long, dim trail ahead
that stretches upward toward the great divide.










[Editor’s note: Few have employed the Spanish language so masterfully as Pablo Neruda. I’ve often felt that an important incentive to improve my own rudimentary Spanish would be the ability to read and appreciate Neruda’s poetry in his native tongue. For now, alas, I have to be satisfied with the translation of by Alastair Reid, who has been called “Neruda’s most talented and imaginitive English translator”. This is from Neruda’s poetic autobiography, written in his elder years as he reminisced down his long and eventful life from his remote home on the coast of Chile. As winter winds down here in Virginia, and I can already see in the woods the subtle wash of red maple buds, I’m waiting for the earth too.]
Return me, oh sun,
[Editor’s note: This past weekend, driving home from the mountains of West Virginia, I saw groves of sycamores lining the river bottoms and along the creeks running down the hollows. This poem, by one of the great American poets and communicants with nature, is a worthy tribute to one of the most magnificent trees in our American sylva (also captured beautifully in prose by Donald Culross Peattie — see 
The fish
[Editor’s note: Walt Whitman – a cosmos, of 
[Editor’s note: There appears to be a growing trend among bloggers featuring some theme on Fridays, which I find an attractive idea. Therefore, on Fridays, the Natural Patriot will be featuring . . . poetry. Why? Because poetry gets closer to the heart and soul of what we really value in Nature than the science and wonkish policy that we spend so much time discussing, important as that is. This will have to be experimental because, alas, the computer interface has a certain unfortunate dissonance with the spirit of poetry, which is best kindled in a state of slow, quiet reflection foreign to the web. Nevertheless, it’s the medium of our day. I can’t guarantee a contribution every week because, well, I have a day job. So here it is, the first installment. If you like this piece, I highly recommend 