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Poetry and Earth – Always

May 1, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

Native Southern Wildflower – Geranium maculatum

 . 
[ poems by Fred Chappell, Patricia Crittenden, Patricia Hooper, Richard Widerkehr,
Ann Deagon, Peter Makuck, David Manning ]
 . 
Forever Mountain
 . 
J.T.Chappell, 1912-1978
 . 
Now a lofty smoke has cleansed my vision.
 . 
I see my father has gone to climb
Lightly the Pisgah slope, taking the time
He’s got a world of, making spry headway
In the fresh green mornings, stretching out
Noontimes in the groves of beech and maple.
He has cut a walking stick of second-growth hickory
And through the amber afternoon he measures
Its shadow and his own shadow on a sunny rock.
Not marking the hour, but observing
The quality of light come over him.
He is alone, except what voices out of time
Swarm to his head like bees to the bee-tree crown,
The voices of former life as indistinct as heat.
By the clear trout pool he builds his fire at twilight,
And in the night a granary of stars
Rises in the water and spreads from edge to edge.
He sleeps, to dream the tossing dream
Of the horses of pine trees, their shoulders
Twisting like silk ribbon in the breeze.
 . 
He rises glad and early and goes his way,
Taking by plateaus the mountain that possesses him.
 . 
My vision blurs blue with distance,
I see no more.
Forever Mountain has become a cloud
That light turns gold, that wind dislimns.
 . 
This is continually a prayer.
 . 
Fred Chappell (1936-2024)
from Source, LSU Press (1985), and collected in The Fred Chappell Reader, St. Martin’s Press (1987)
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
This was the first contemporary poem I read as I returned to poetry in my forties. I have read it again and again since then, as well as most everything else Fred has written. This, along with the poem Hymn by A R Ammons, was also the inspiration for me to imagine I might take up the pen and write as well. Even more today than all those decades ago, I am captured by this vision of heaven, the afterlife, as a campfire at night with a granary of stars, rising trout, and a new mountain to climb each morning. May it be so.
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
We Set Out Together
 . 
My daughter and me,
up an old mountain road through the late autumn trees.
We’d agreed she’d climb to the peak on her own and, on her way back,
find me where I’d wait among bright colored leaves.
 . 
But the leaves are gone, fallen back to the earth.
We’ve come too late.
 . 
We pause near the last of the asters; that lets me keep up.
But soon I begin to tire.
As we pass the first bench, I’m still with her.
Then, before the second, I say, “You go on ahead,”
as we had agreed.
She walks up the mountain, as I rest on the downside,
glad not to be chasing life’s peaks anymore.
 . 
This is how it goes, isn’t it?
You carry your children until they can toddle.
But, when you finally could walk together, they’re too busy.
Now, as you grow old, they walk ahead
and you see them receding as they round the bend.
 . 
I reach the second bench alone and walk on
to an opening in the woods with a long view across a deep stream-cut hollow.
I stand and look.
The ravine is too deep to cross; can three decades be bridged?
Will she pass or has she gone so far ahead that I won’t see her?
Her footsteps die out, replaced by a faint breeze whispering among the dry leaves,
then the buzz of a bee on a few faded flowers,
then nothing.
 . 
I wait.
I wait some more.
I wait as long as hope can hold on and then a bit longer,
then I turn back to the second bench.
 . 
It’s all agreed; she will come back
and I will be here – for a while.
Life’s path is universal, but uniquely trod
rising briefly from earth, then disappearing whence it came.
Is it better to live and die, as the forest does, without foresight?
She thinks the future is long and she knows she will return.
But I know time is short and fickle – like the first hard frost.
Will she come back in time?
 . 
Patricia Crittenden
 . 
Thank you, Pat, for sharing this lovely poem. It weaves between observation and musing, between presence and anticipation, even between joy and grief, just like a mountain path weaves up the ridge and down again. We may say we are glad that we no longer have to chase life’s peaks, but then regret swells as we watch life’s treasure recede. There are so many endings here, and so many hopes that what we hold dear may not end altogether. May each of us discover that it is never too late.
— Bill
 . 

Autumn Sasssafras

 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Sightings
 . 
The world leafs out again, the willow first
and then the river birches near the road
we’re driving down, you in your car seat watching,
for hawks or smaller birds returning home.
Two years have passed since you could walk or stand
alone.  The winter-damaged fields are sown,
and there, along the ridge, unraveling,
spirals of song birds, drifts of dogwood trees,
restored to blossom, beauty that breaks the heart.
And you whose spinal cord could not be healed:
you’re lowering the window, looking up
at miles of wings, your face alive with joy.
 . 
Patricia Hooper
from her fifth book, A Necessary Persistence
selected by Richard Widerkehr
 . 
Hooper makes us feel connected to this “annual miracle” of April, as E. Dickinson called it.  Clear images, strong feeling—a grandson’s wonder, the speaker’s joy and gratitude—this poem is a gift to the reader.  (I wrote a review of A Necessary Persistence for Aquifer a few years ago.)
— Richard
 . 
✾
 . 
In The Forest, There Are Stars
 . 
Thick green-black branches can’t hide them,
whistling through cedar and fir trees.  You’ve seen
one star drop as if torn from the forest.
 . 
Here stars jostle each other, falling toward you—
you forget what you were and how you came here.
Maybe, by day on the road to islands,
 . 
can you remember the white edges
of rooftops, how the forest rose to meet you?
Here sword ferns jut from the hillsides.
 . 
High fern-like branches fan themselves downward,
and stars soak you with their cold radiance.
The stars that were small and cold
 . 
in the sky are still small and cold.  The branches
lift about them, hissing lightly.
 . 
Richard Widerkehr
from Missing The Owl (Shanti Arts Publications), first published in Sweet Tree Review and then reprinted in Adventures Northwest
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 .  . 
Augury
 . 
Tonight my father cupped his hands and blew
into their hollow sphere and brought to life
the long wild resonant cry
of country boyhood, owl-haunted evenings
and the dark modulations of distant hounds,
fluttered his fingers throbbing into memory
those sobbing whistles hunting down the rails
my childhood dreaming in the restless city.
 . 
And as my children wondered cupping their hands
to capture that primeval mimicry
of all that haunts and heightens our precarious sense
of living rooted in immemorial time,
I saw my father new, and shared his knowing
the secret of our give and take of breath:
live long enough to know that we are dying,
hand on with tenderness and dignity
our resonant art
the long learned call
of trumpeter man.
 . 
Ann Deagon (1930-2024)
collected in Word and Witness: 100 years of North Carolina Poetry, Carolina Academic Press, Durham NC (1999)
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
“The secret of our give and take of breath:” the mimicry of primeval haunts whispers that secret into our soul, that we share these short lives with every creature that snuffles, caws, and swims, with every waving tree and scented flower. What call, what whistle will we hear that can draw us back together into one circle?
 . 
In her bio, Ann Deagon once remarked that she didn’t begin writing until she was forty, “when that three-headed dog love death and poetry took me in its teeth and shook me.” She taught Classics at Guilford College and was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, among many other honors during her life.
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
My Son Draws an Apple Tree
 . 
I watch it grow
at the end of his dimpled hand
rooted in white paper.
 . 
The strokes are fast
and careless, as if the hand
has little time.
 . 
Quick black trunk,
a green crown and in the white
air all by itself
 . 
a red splotch,
an apple face with a frown
that is his
 . 
he gravely says
looking up at me — the stiffening
branch he falls from.
 . 
Peter Makuck (1940-1923)
from Long Lens, New & Selected Poems, © 2010 by Peter Makuck, Boa Editions, Ltd.; American Poets Continuum Series, No. 121
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
Some poems we return to only to discover that at each visit they bestow upon us a different benediction. Which simply makes sense, since we are a different person each time we read the lines. I am the tree bent and stiffening. I pray only this, that for those I love and for all the earth as well that not all innocence and purity may be lost. Thank you, Peter, for continuing to inspire.
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
The Dance
 . 
I say yes to the tulip tree
dropping its cups of flowers,
golden and green
and to the derelict ailanthus
breaker of concrete sidewalks
and to the sumac with its cones of fire.
 . 
Yes to the white-tails that float
their magic, then vanish
far into the woods’ deep green
and to the mallard pair, duck and drake
that waddle up from Crabtree Creek
and to the earthworms
they clear from our driveway.
 . 
Yes to the turtle, the red slider
that spring calls from the creek
to wandering, the one I rescued
from a storm-drain and gave my blessing to.
And yes to that damn beaver
that cut down the giant beech
near the stream, my favorite tree
in the wetland, and to the trees
he left behind.
 . 
Yes to the night’s extravagance of stars,
to Vega’s frozen light, the lyre of the stars
and to the southern cross
and multitudes of strange lights
I cannot see, much less name, so far below
the horizon over Patagonia
all the way down to the pole.
 . 
And yes to the blessing of day and night,
mates following each other
and to the contentment each brings
in its own way, bright, then silent dark.
 . 
Because none of these I can keep.
They are not mine, and I cannot stop
the music in the middle of the dance.
 . 
So yes to this morning rain carrying
yesterday away.
 . 
David Treadway Manning (1928-2021)
from Sailing the Bright Stream: New & Selected Poems, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC (2020)
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
Thank you, Dave for years of friendship. For minds that open and expand, always. For a thousand true laughs, the bright and knowing ones and the wicked ones. For this poem, its music in which you and I will continue to live.
— Bill
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Life is not so much a matter of discovering something new as it is a matter of rediscovering what has always been present.
— W. Ralph Ward, Jr.
 . 
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.
— Minnie Aumonier
 . 
Thank you for celebrating the month of April with International Earth Day (April 22) and National Poetry Month, and for continuing the celebration. And thank you, Readers, who have selected poems to share that connect us to our planet and each other. EVERY DAY is EARTH DAY!
And thanks always to camping buddy Mike Barnett, who keeps me supplied with the unending delights of quotations from the spirit of Nature.
 . 
❁
 . 
Thank you for visiting Verse and Image: If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation. . 
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
2016-10-17b Doughton Park Tree

2016-10-17 Doughton Park Tree

 . 

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Poetry and Earth – Spring

April 29, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
[ poems by Amy Tilly, Joel Solonche, Suzie Taylor, Kathleen Rowell, 
Esther Mfonyam, Sandra Dreis  ]
 . 
Vernal
 . 
greening of spring onions
fermenting of fall apples
scent orchard air
buds ruffle bare branches
home hemisphere hankers
toward the sun
still-slanted light suffuses gold
in the old dog’s fur
she turns to check my loitering
in the green, gold, and still winter blue
 . 
Amy Copley Tilly
 . 
I wrote this on the vernal equinox, feeling the connections to the seasons and to my old dog. I was just caught up in the swirl of it all! I was down in the 100 year old plus orchard on the Blue Ridge Parkway below my house. I’ve run thousands of miles in that orchard and learned something there in all seasons.
— Amy
 . 

photo by Amy Tilly

 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁❀
 . 
Skunk Cabbage
 . 
A spear that breaks the half-frozen
mud, it does not wait for the permission
of the sun, for it carries a small furnace
in its purple hood. Lured by the smell
like a cellar that never dries, the flies
arrive while the bees are still asleep.
Thick and veined, the leaves unfold like
the ears of a green dog. It’s a stubborn
tenant of the low ground where it drinks
the black water of the winter's end and
turns the rot of the year into a lung.
By summer it will be a ghost of melted
lace, but now it is the only thing with
a pulse in the muck, a beautiful ugliness
that stays its ground. Listen, the earth
is speaking, and this is its first word.
 . 
Joel Solonche
 . 

photo by Emily Solonche

 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁❀
 . 
Bloodroot
 . 
Blessed be the white bloodroot blooms,
the first ephemerals to herald spring
singing the sleeping earth awake
their faces shine open,
greeting the morning sun
as it warms the slumbering dirt
later folding closed against the darkness and
the black night air
that still shows the does’ breath as
she ambles by.
A dozen petals fall like confetti,
spilling after just a day or so of bloom.
 . 
Suzie Taylor
 . 
Outside has been my refuge and my home. I brought my children there and now my daughter is in Nashville, TN, completing her PhD studying salamanders. Anna and I stay in touch sharing untitled images of magic we find during our days. She, being at lower elevation than I, sent her spring ephemeral images weeks before mine appeared. I participate in Joseph Bathanti’s wonderful poetry workshops on Tuesday nights at FARM CAFÉ, and I wrote this a weeks ago. Nature is such a lovely muse!
— Suzie
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Garden Meditation
 . 
Growing in my garden, beneath the maple trees
Are Foxgloves by the dozens- purple, pink and dusty green.
They grow like weeds, bold, wild and free.
Never where you plant them- obviously.
 . 
My favorite fern, the Maidenhair, has stems of  rich deep black,
They are fragile, native, delicate, but grace they never lack.
 . 
The shocking fireworks of red are all the Beebalm blooms.
Their minty scent when cut will nicely fill a room.
 . 
Lady’s Mantle catch the dew, like diamonds that will not last.
The  tiny yellow fluffy flowers reach out as I walk past.
 . 
Then there are the lilies, Turk’s Cap, Stella and roadside Day.
Bright orange, white and golden color as in the breeze they sway.
 . 
Hellebore – a hell of a name for such a sturdy flower.
The only one who dares to bloom in Winter’s cold dark hour.
 . 
Sweet William red, begonia pink, some random purple plants,
send rainbows of the spectrum amongst the slugs and ants.
 . 
My garden is my meditation, to tend and wander through.
Always needing, never boring
when you find there’s something new.
 . 
Kathleen Rowell
 . 
I was inspired by a high school horticulture teacher to pursue a degree in horticulture.  I have always found the quiet of a garden makes me smile.  I talk to the plants, scold the deer and sing with the birds. My heart rests when I can smell rain coming as the evening cools.  I know then all is well. This poem written at the Joseph Bathanti’s Tuesday writer’s workshop at FARM Café.
— Kathleen
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁✾
 . 
A Poem
(Mayapple)
 . 
Hiding underneath
a beautiful green leaf,
lusciously growing beside the creek,
was the sight of a delicate white flower.
 . 
If you were not looking
beneath the green leaves
stretching above it,
you would miss its beauty.
 . 
Hiding underneath—
from the harsh sun,
from the strong wind,
from animals in the wild—
was this quiet treasure.
 . 
If you were standing far off,
you would miss it…
underneath.
 . 
Esther Mfonyam
 . 
One beautiful evening after dinner, I received a clear message from nature. While taking my evening walk along the creek at Well of Mercy, I noticed a wildflower that immediately drew my attention. Its leaves looked like an umbrella, and underneath it was a delicate white flower. It struck me in a quiet but powerful way—this flower’s beauty was being preserved by the very thing that also kept it hidden. I only noticed it because a dear friend told me to look along the creek for wildflowers. Otherwise, I might have walked right past it. The word that came to mind as I stood there was umbrella. And I began to think about the times in my life when I have needed the “shade” of others. I thought of my family—how they have made sacrifices to protect and support me through different seasons. They have given their time—offering wisdom, encouragement, and guidance. They have given their resources—helping in moments of real need. They have given their prayers—holding me when my heart felt discouraged and exhausted. But most of all, they have given of themselves. Like the leaves over that flower, their presence has provided covering—not to diminish me, but to preserve me. May this simple image from nature remind you of the times you have provided shade for others, the times shade has been provided for you.
— Esther
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁✾
 . 
Silly Daffodilly
 . 
Add solar juices,
and the cheddar bulbs open
wearing tiny Victrola noses
promising March melodies,
tunes uploaded to a puffy cloud
then VRUMM, drowned
by a gas mower’s throbbing drone.
 . 
The landscaper rides a John Deere
wearing a Dash baseball cap
and reappears back and forth behind
a fat forsythia a mere ten yards away,
neighbor’s steady Friday-guy who forces
me to reconsider deck enjoyment.
 . 
Solar juices. Victrola noses.
Miraculous quiet.
Wait. A poof. A trill.
Flowerpot to ear, my mood rekindles
as stems bow, tickle my cheek.
I listen as daffodils sing the simple
flourish, TRA-LA-LA-LA-LA,
a fine, spring madrigal.
 . 
Sandra Brodkin Dreis
first appeared in Ravensperch. To be published this summer, 2026, in Good Dirt by Kelsay Books.
 . 
In my mind, I could see an old ad for RCA Victor with a small dog like my Jack Russell, Jillie, listening to the daffodil shaped speaker. Sitting on the deck with my yellow daffodil, I imagined music coming from the flower like an early version of a record player. It would have to be a madrigal, but a happy one, of course. “Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing…..tra la la…
— Sandra
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
The healing potential of flowering plants is an integral part of the deep bond that exists between humans and nature. That flowers have the ability to heal us, not only physically but also emotionally and spiritually, is something that has been recognized and utilized as far back as we know.
— Anne McIntyre, from Flower Power
 . 
In the beauty of nature lies the spirit of hope.
— Author unknown.
 . 
Thank you for celebrating the month of April with International Earth Day (April 22) and National Poetry Month. And thank you, Readers, who have selected poems to share that connect us to our planet and each other. We will continue posting EARTH POETRY throughout the month of April – and beyond April as well, of course, since EVERY DAY is EARTH DAY!
 . 
❁
 . 
Thank you for visiting Verse and Image: If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
IMG_0877
 . 

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Poetry and Earth – Awe

April 27, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
[ poems by Sam Love, Joey Hall, Donna Wojnar Dzurilla, Ron Rash,
George Ella Lyon, Christy Hamrick, Gene Hyde, Ronnie Scharfman  ]
 . 
Golden Spiral
 . 
Blowing the conch shell
can herald a call to prayer,
warn of danger,
or celebrate a victory.
 . 
With lips clinched the breath
enters a small hole
in the end of the shell
and bounces off the spiral cavity
 . 
to expand in volume.
The conch mimics nature’s designs
of spiral galaxies, spiral bacteria,
packed atomic particles,
 . 
and the contours of sand dunes.
This sympathetic vibration
amplifies inside the conch
until a loud ohm-like sound
 . 
exits the large opening.
Listen to contemporary poets
trumpet warnings of:
global warming,
 . 
stronger hurricanes
increased forest fires,
and beaches so hot
mollusks cook in their shell.
 . 
May this voicing of our survival instinct
resonate like the expanding volume
in the conch and awaken the masses.
 . 
Sam Love
 . 
I worked with a Boys and Girls Club to create some poems for a local Earth Day event on the theme of water, which we are doing in New Bern next Saturday, April 25. I was particularly pleased with a poem from an 8th grader. [see below] I am also including Golden Spiral, the opening poem for my book of environmental poems Earth Resonance: Poems for a Viable Future published by The Poetry Box.
— Sam
 . 
❀
 . 
Water
 . 
The ichor, the future, the blood of our earth,
older than life, and there since our birth,
The life-giving fluid of infinite worth,
still teeters yet on the edge of full dearth.
 . 
If you haven’t yet guessed, this ichor is water,
the crystal clear fluid and life’s grand supporter,
Our vital restorer, and marine life’s transporter,
and yet its supply just grows shorter, yet shorter.
 . 
You see, o’er ninety percent of this water toils,
in salty tides, but that’s not just where it spoils,
because pipes and fields leak harmful fluids and oils,
leading Earth’s greatest resource to be dirtied and soiled.
 . 
But actions are clear in their paths, and essential in taking,
or else this great resource may end up breaking.
So conserve it in usage, and limit your taking,
and don’t contribute to the Earth’s nigh unmaking.
 . 
Preserving this water, this lifeblood, is dire,
lest every dear creature on Earth soon expire,
So avoid a drought’s wrath, and Mother Nature’s mad ire,
and preserve the clear liquid that we all require.
 . 
Joseph ‘Joey’ Hall, Grade 8
selected by Sam Love
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Fire Along the New River Gorge 
 . 
FAYETTEVILLE, WVA—A brush fire of unknown origin in the New River Gorge National Park & Preserve burned 1,550 acres as of 11/11/23. 
 . 
The prehistoric Teays River
flowed northward branched
east to west               cut
roots out of the old mountains.
 . 
Meltwaters, pulled by the moon
flowed back, filled the New River
from plateau to silted bottom—
a thousand foot drop.
 . 
Forests
Rise.
Fall.
Rise.
 . 
Steep Valley
War Ridge
Backus
Mountain
 . 
Sugar Maple Sweetgum White Ash Eastern Hemlock Beech Pawpaw
Yellow Buckeye Tulip Tree Basswood Eastern White Pine
Northern Red Oak                                                                 Black Walnut
 . 
Burn.
Rain
cuts
new roots.
 . 
Donna Wojnar Dzurilla
from the anthology, Tributaria: Poetry, Prose, & Art Inspired by Tributaries of the Ohio River Watershed. Sherry Cook Stanforth, Richard Hague, and Michael Thompson eds. Dos Madres Press. Originary Arts Initiative. Fall 2025.
 . 
I wrote “Fire Along the New River Gorge” after spending time enjoying the New River Gorge National Park and Preserves. I learned of the brush fire in the epigraph on the news. I arrived home in Pittsburgh to learn that smoke from the Canadian wildfires drifted through Pittsburgh’s skies. I thought about how during the 60+ years of my life (I grew up and live in Pittsburgh) I saw the air and rivers clear (for the most part) from pollution. It may seem foolish, but it was the first time I realized that fires could be harbingers of climate change. I thought about how the ancient Teays River defined the Appalachian Mountains–that it flowed north, then backflowed, and that intrigued me. I thought of rain as rebirth and of how brush fires have always occurred; about how fire can cleanse after which rain restores. I am afraid of the Earth reaching the point of no return. I hope we, as a planet, aren’t too late and that rains will come.
— Donna
 . 
✾
 . 
Speckled Trout
 . 
Water-flesh gleamed like mica:
orange fins, red flankspots, a char
shy as ginseng, found only
in spring-flow gaps, the thin clear
of faraway creeks no map
could name. My cousin showed me
those hidden places. I loved
how we found them, the way we
followed no trail, just stream-sound
tangled in rhododendron,
to where slow water opened
a hole to slip a line in,
and lift as from a well bright
shadows of another world,
held in my hand, their color
already starting to fade.
 . 
Ron Rash
first published in Weber Studies, 1996, and reprinted in Raising the Dead, Iris Press, 2002.
selected by Donna Wojnar Dzurilla
 . 
 . 
✾
 . 
What Do I Hope to Learn by Watching Birds? 
 . 
Sunflower seed shells
pepper the snow.
A lone male
Red-bellied Woodpecker,
crimson crown
rusted ivory breast
armored against cold
by chevron wings,
worries suet
through the wire frame.
 . 
A spectrum of
preternatural blues,
flash of white
swoops crosswise,
Blue Jay
breast thick
like the gray mourning
doves; spooks away the
Juncos
Starlings
 . 
House Finches
Tufted Titmouse
Chickadees,
and little brown jobbies: the sputzies
(spatz, German for sparrow).
The woodpecker
finds perch atop
silver maple—
bare but for russet buds
hoping for sun and spring.
 . 
Jay claims ownership
of the full feeder.
In response to the bird’s girth,
it swings
to center of gravity;
dumps fresh pips
to dance
amidst hollow husks
strewn atop
ice-crusted snow.
 . 
I hear
no birdsong
through
the double-
pane window.
Careful not to:
move
make a sound
be seen
be a threat.
 . 
Mated cardinals
find ground. Six pair.
A flock of ghosts?
Brilliant redbirds
shoo chestnut mates
away from piles of seed,
collapse their mohawk crest;
prepare for battle,
to challenge
the blue bird. But
 . 
a bald eagle,
juvenile;
dark umber
black beak
ivory speckled under-feathers
no mate, no aerie,
up from the frozen river,
hunting;
shadow-tracks over
crystal battlefield.
 . 
Weighted pause
in the solid snow-quiet.
Ice diamonds glister,
revealing luminous
gleaming facets;
sparkle
broken by
bird
tree
dry husks.
 . 
My backyard a stage.
 . 
Donna Wojnar Dzurilla
 . 
I wrote “What Do I Hope to Learn by Watching Birds?” after returning from a weekly vigil that I attend, conducted each Friday by a different religious denomination in front of Pittsburgh’s I.C.E. field office. The vigil’s prayers are for those murdered and  those detained, as well as prayers for peace and change. When I returned home I looked out my kitchen window at the birds at the feeders in my backyard and watched a busy snapshot of nature play out. Watching the birds made me think about the many sides of nature. It made me think about human nature and I considered whether fascism and hate are an ugly trait of human nature–something we will never be rid of, something that resurfaces and returns. In my poem, the red and blue birds mix. I don’t know if the young eagle will revert to its nature–is it a predator or a noble, heroic protector? 
— Donna
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
The Meadow Does Not Know
 . 
about the stock market.
Today she is worth
exactly what she was worth
yesterday, a year ago, at creation.
I don’t mean property value,
taxable assets.  I mean
milkweed and copper moths
honeybees, cow vetch,
king snakes.  Meadow life
is not money.  What rises
and falls here are stems
and flowers, leaves and fruit.
No zigzag line of profit and panic
but the great wheel turning.
Here God gives of her
extravagance and here, like
flicker, viceroy, dragonfly
we come into our inheritance.
   . 
George Ella Lyon
from She Let Herself Go: Poems (LSU 2012)
 . 
In the fall of 2008, I was on a writing retreat at the Mary Anderson Center in southern Indiana. It’s surrounded by 400 acres of woods, fields, meadows threaded with trails. I was there when the subprime mortgage crisis hit. There were terrible consequences, of course, & all the talk was about how bad it could get. As a freelance writer & teacher, I was particularly worried that my jobs would disappear. Heart tight, thoughts spinning, I walked first around the lake & then through my favorite meadow. Ironweed, Joe Pye, goldenrod, more varieties of flowers & grasses than I could name. I was overcome by the beauty & faithfulness of it all, & that’s when “The Meadow Does Not Know/ about the stock market” came to me. A praise song.  I kept saying it to myself till I got back to my room where some version of the rest of the poem came to me. Then I worked on it.
— George Ella
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Awe
 . 
A
great blue
heron spreads
its wings and squawks
rising from stream bed
we pause and hold our breath
it takes flight over Horne Creek
soaring above Yadkin Islands
easy talk picked back up as we walk
reminder tucked away to seek stillness
 . 
Christy Hamrick
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
I Should Hope to Pray Like the Trees 
 . 
The trees can’t control their lives. We can’t always control what happens to us. The trees can teach us acceptance. And metamorphosis.  Linda Brown, quoted in The Nature Fix.
 . 
I should hope to pray
Like the trees, roots running deep,
Limbs singing above.
 . 
Blending earth and sky,
Supplicants sway and bow, each
Snowy branch and bough
 . 
A sylvan chorus,
A genuflective dance, a
Chance to waltz with God.
 . 
Gene Hyde
 . 
I’ve attached one of my ekphrastic poems, “I Should Hope to Pray like the Trees,” for your consideration. The photo was taken outside of Banff, Alberta, and the poem and photo were originally published in the Tiny Seed Literary Journal. I was moved by the way the snow-covered trees seemed to bow, looking like they were praying. 
— Gene
 . 

photo by Gene Hyde

 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Serengeti Psalm
 . 
Let the Land Rovers be our camel caravans,
let the Masai herders, bare-legged,
wrapped in checked cloth
be our shepherds.
 . 
Let Your dirt roads, rain-rutted to mud,
or sun-scorched to dust
take us over savannahs, by shining lakes
flecked with flamingos, vast grassy plains
punctuated by acacia trees and majestic creatures.
 . 
You had Adam name them; did he see all of these?
long-legged, long-necked. giraffes browsing or grazing,
sleek velvety leopards lazing on branches,
baboon families racing by the road
as if late to a meeting,
gazelles, faces like African masks, leaping
and zebras, still, as if in prayer,
hippos wallowing like old ladies in a pool,
elephants flapping huge ears, their fans under the blazing sun,
warthogs, burrowing, backside first, ugly faces watching ours,
migrating wildebeests, crossing the horizon, strangely hideous.
 . 
On the endless green caldera floor, we are but specks among them all,
a moment in Your eternity.
You created them first, witness to Your glory,
Your living proof.
 . 
So that when it is our turn, we shall respond
with praise.
 . 
Ronnie Scharfman
 . 
My family and I recently returned from safari in Tanzania where we witnessed the variety and proximity of wildlife in awae!  The game parks are their happy place, and we, tiny specks among them.
— Ronnie
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.
— E. Merrill Root
 . 
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to who this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
— Albert Einstein
 . 
Thank you for celebrating the month of April with International Earth Day (April 22) and National Poetry Month. And thank you, Readers, who have selected poems to share that connect us to our planet and each other. We will continue posting EARTH POETRY throughout the month of April – and beyond April as well, of course, since EVERY DAY is EARTH DAY!
 . 
❁
 . 
Thank you for visiting Verse and Image: If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
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 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
2016-05-08a Doughton Park Tree
 . 

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