PREFACE

“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere”. – Vincent Van Gogh

If we ask ourselves, what is Spirit Of Nature; I am sure we’ll get one simple answer, and that is, ‘it is the sheer enjoyment of being alive’. If we look around the nature, we will certainly find out this truth everywhere.  Yes indeed, we rejoice life out of nature. Nature gives us immense enjoyment through which we can feel a sense of satisfaction of being alive in this world. Again it is this spirit of nature; through which we can feel the pulse of the universe. Therefore, our knowledge of the universe has emerged through this spirit of nature. If we consider the entire human history along with its evolution, we will certainly find out that, this spirit of nature has guided us, to become more humble and human in our approach to the ultimate truth of the existence.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once told that, every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole; we can easily say that this perfection of the whole is also the spirit of nature. It is truly perfect and complete in its entire existence. This perfection and the completeness is the source of our knowledge and wisdom. According to Leonardo da Vinci, nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws; she has no effect without cause or invention without necessity. Therefore, the spirit of nature has shaped our knowledge and wisdom. Not only that, it has also helped us to realize the true beauty in it’s in depth essence. The world famous scientist Albert Einstein has said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty”. Yes, spirit of nature itself has enabled us to realize this truth.

When the sight of the blue skies fills us with joy, when a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move us, when the simple things of nature give us messages that we understand, rejoice, we believe that our soul is alive. According to John Lubbock; earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. Yes, spirit of nature is so important in our life to make us a complete human being. Only then, we can be happy in our life. As one of the finest novelists and one of the all time great writer Leo Tolstoy once said; “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken”. Actually, this is the key to remain happy in our everyday life. We are dependent on the spirit of nature. Without it, we cannot survive at all. Harrison Ford has once summarized this truth very nicely in his comment, nature does not need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature. So true indeed it is. Therefore, we need to love the spirit of nature desperately for our own survival and for our actual development. The living legend poet Alice Walker has admitted it nicely in her own way, “I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe”.

Yes, through the spirit of nature we would like to realize the spirit of universe. Moreover, for a poet it is one of the essential medium to attain the ultimate truth of life as a whole. Keeping this notion in mind this year, we at Our Poetry Archive has embarked upon this Anthology of ‘Spirit of Nature’. Every year we publish one anthology on a particular subject or topic. Poets around the world eagerly participate in this yearly endeavor. To our credit, we have already published four beautiful anthologies on four different topics in the last four years of our journey in web publishing. This is our fifth anthology in five year. This year we are publishing 530 poems on spirit of nature of 159 poets around the world. We believe, this massive collection of poems would please the readers immensely and would give them complete satisfaction. With this anthology, readers around the world would certainly get a firsthand experience of the contemporary poets and their vision on spirit of nature.

My personal thanks would go to the entire team of the editorial desk of OPA. This anthology is the collective work of all the participants and the team members of the editorial desk of OPA. We would remain obliged to each participants of this anthology for their contributions and support to make it a success. With this publication of ‘OPA Anthology of Poetry 2019: SPIRIT OF NATURE’, we are closing down our email address: opa.anthology@gmail.com for this year. It will be reopened again next year for yet another anthology that will be published in 2020. We will inform everyone at the right time.

Anyone, who would like to participate in our monthly web issues, can send at least three poems attached in a single MS-WORD file and a recent profile picture along with the short BIO, written only in 3^rd person narrative to our regular email address: ourpoetryarchive@gmail.com before the 10^th of any month. Please note that no .pdf document will be accepted.

We do hope that our readers will enjoy this entire volume of Spirit of Nature with immense satisfaction and the participants will be praised according to their literary brilliance. Thank you all from the editorial desk of OPA.