One Bright and Real Caress

Build an altar at each moment with a goodbye on the tip of the tongue.
Slow dance drunk in the robust now.
Show up with playful paws and the gravity of worms.
Strap the searchlight around your ribs and shuffle like a crescent moon over all your little resistances.
Saunter past all the gates.
Slit yourself down the middle, pull your skin to the horizon and drip like a mountain.
Can we be here now?
Really be here?

These are some of the invitations lurking in the poems of One Bright and Real Caress. This collection is a celebration of the moment. Of not escaping. Of impermanence. Of death as life partner. With syllables of relentless affirmation, these 40 poems bring an unconditional caress over all the textures of life and our multitudes within. As an invitation to presence and an honoring of the all-too-real struggle to not flee the moment, One Bright and Real Caress welcomes every conceivable crescent mood, slivered and slow, with no aim but to edge out more and more into the whole ceremony and celebration.

One Bright and Real Caress is Book 2 in the Re-Membering Series.

If you are a nature and poetry lover, this is the collection for you. May the poems in One Bright and Real Caress inspire your wild nature hearts and be a small part of The Great Turning.

For digital: Download here as a pdf or get the Ebook directly from Bookshop or Amazon.

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My name is Ryan Van Lenning, Founder of Wild Nature Heart, and I am an earth-lover with a deep desire to be of service in the work of re-connection, re-membering, and re-inhabiting the animate web of life. I started Wild Nature Heart to support people at a crossroads to re-connect with the wisdom of both inner and outer wild nature, to live their soul callings into the world, and to assist in the work of repairing broken belonging. I am a threshold guide and barbarian poet of the Great Turning (author of several collections of poetry, including Re-Membering, From Inside These Wild Ones, One Bright and Real Caress, An Ambitious Silence, Trust the Ceremony, F*ck the Ceremony, and Trust the Ceremony, Then Yeses Come Bubbling, Within the Cave Something Pulses, Moon Has a Long Memory, Kiss Me A Huckleberry, and High-Cooing Through the Seasons: Haiku From the Forest). I am trained as a rite-of-passage/wilderness ceremony guide through the School of Lost Borders, certified as an Ecotherapist through The Earthbody Institute, where I teach the Level 1-3 ecotherapy courses, and am a Certified Wilderness First Responder through Foster Calm. Prior to moving to California 18 years ago, I taught Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and Environmental Ethics at Sinclair College in Ohio. I live among the forest and rivers in northern California, ancestral Wiyot and Yurok land. I like cinnamon ice cream, fantastic fungi, and river ottering.

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Testimonials for previous collection Re-Membering:

“Bless Ryan Van Lenning for listening to the wild voices and bringing back the news for those who have lost their way. Bless him for reminding us of our original love affair with the earth and of what we know deep in our souls. His poems give wise counsel: let go of the debris, remember who you are, do not abandon your luminous thread.” —Lorraine Anderson, editor of Sisters of the Earth and Earth & Eros

“Ryan’s poetry speaks deeply and clearly to the awakening to our true interconnected nature, which is the only way we can transform our world.” –Molly Young Brown, Author of Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (co-authored with Joanna Macy), Editor of Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects

“Ryan’s poetry sprouts out of him from moist, fertile soil – painting a lush landscape of sensual and philosophical magic. His poems transport you to a way of living in relationship with the earth that is lovingly intimate. Ryan integrates body, spirit, and social commentary into a vision of how to live a nature-inspired life amidst noise and overrun technology. ” Ariana Candell, LMFT, Founder of The Earthbody Institute