To lose ourselves in nature is such joy

 now summer days evoke the trance-like past

where children played in joyous, daisied fields

with buttercups so bright the memory lasts

a freedom that our conscious growth will steal.

those stones and leaves and many colored flowers

were gathered into images that glow

yet later we forgot those treasured hours

when for a while we lived within life’s flow

we did not look and see, but felt at one

we lived as did the birds high in the trees

now we see and write , experience almost gone–

refuse to live like flowers content, at ease

to lose ourselves in nature is such joy

this to our adult selves we must restore