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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.
 . 
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
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
2016-05-08a Doughton Park Tree
 . 

Posted in Ecopoetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Poetry and Earth – Clay

April 24, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
[ poems by Robert Hass, Debra Kaufman, Hilda Downer, 
Richard Wilbur, Paul Karnowski ]
 . 
The Image
 . 
The child brought blue clay from the creek
and the woman made two figures: a lady and a deer.
At that season deer came down from the mountain
and fed quietly in the redwood canyons.
The woman and the child regarded the figure of the lady,
the crude roundnesses, the grace, the coloring like shadow.
They were not sure where she came from,
except the child’s fetching and the woman’s hands
and the lead-blue clay of the creek
where the deer sometimes showed themselves at sundown.
 . 
Robert Hass
selected by Debra Kaufman
 . 
I love how this poem speaks to the creative spirit and how the basic elements of the earth inspire and sustain us. There is here a delicate, a reverent, interdependence. Had the creek and earth not made the clay, had the child not brought the clay to the woman, had the deer not visited the creek, had the poet not observed the wonder of it all, the spark that inspired the poet would not exist, and we would not have this poem. I admire the brevity and apparent simplicity of the poem, knowing that the poem, like the clay, had been worked over so that every line (as every curve of the figure) is a work of art. A gift. A wonder.
— Debra
 . 
❀
 . 
Off-White
 . 
This Sunday the sky is an eerie
off-white, as if dawn began rising,
then stood still, reluctant to let
the day begin. And no wonder.
I read of collapsing buildings,
 .      . 
people scurrying for shelter,
burning oil fields, smoke and ash
roiling toward heaven. But heaven
refuses our cruelty:
The clouds do not budge.
 . 
I believe, we used to recite,
in the Holy Spirit, and although I could
only picture it as a tattered cloud,
I did believe, as easily as I believed
in God, in America, hand over heart.
 . 
To believe made my small heart soar.
I’d skip home singing This Little Light of Mine.
I had a crush on Jesus, with his
soft brown eyes, who said, Be ye kind
and Suffer the children to come unto me.
 . 
The clouds begin to shred. Any prayer
I might offer dissolves on my tongue.
My body says time to move.
Today, the second day of spring,
will be uncommonly hot.
 . 
Debra Kaufman
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
— Drill, Baby, Drill
 . 
Drill because the rich get richer
and the rest get drilled.
 . 
Drill us in your own image
a colander that can’t hold water,
farms caving in drained sink holes beneath.
Drill until amalgams turn our teeth grey,
our bones fracked and fractured.
 . 
Drill it in
that billionaires are a superior race
because we still don’t get it.
Drill our skulls into frontal lobotomies,
milling our brains with the inane premise
that veterans don’t deserve healthcare
and the elderly don’t deserve
funds they worked for.
 . 
We know there are more than the two genders
of white male and Stepford wife.
 . 
Drill it into normalcy—
the military unleashed on its own people,
the masked orange taco gestapo
as they go from field to field,
door to door.
 . 
Then, drill some more.
Put us on mute—
multimedia censorship.
Undermine libraries and public schools.
We already knew history repeats itself—
on two sides of the penny bitcoin.
The indigenous, forbidden to speak their language,
kept their power alive behind closed doors.
The enslaved, not allowed to read or write,
followed the signs sewn into quilt patterns.
Monarchs and oligarchs,
books burning, bullets drilling
in revolution, civil war, world war—
we will find another way, a better way.
Erase history if you can.
Erase the mentally ill, the homeless,
the poor, the disabled, the elderly,
those on a spectrum,
those bona fide with a genius IQ,
the artists, the writers, musicians
except for an American band
to play for your disgusting dance
like that of a tick before
jumping on its prey.
Oh, what a day
for supporters who hate melatonin
more than felons and pedophiles!
 . 
DOGE data drilling might locate
and make us disappear,
but memory only fosters our courage.
We will remember.
We will not be remembered for our fear.
What more will you be remembered for?
 . 
Drill until you hit rock bottom,
blaming Canada for Fentanyl.
Drill until you come out in China.
Drill until you try to buy
a Nobel Peace Prize
by trading Alaska to Russia
for an interim cease fire
during your term.
Drill and chisel
a moonscape across Earth
to better view your golf courses
and Gaza Resort
safely from your starship
in outer space,
while we get grilled.
 . 
Your fake resuscitation
with a syringe of adrenaline
drilled into the heart of Appalachia.
X marks the rot
where oil and coal
are still dead.
 . 
Drill until the bowels of Appalachia erode
creeks and rivers with toxic sludge.
Deforest the temperate rain forest
by way of tropical hurricane from climate change.
 . 
We already learned from coal mine strikes
and strategic planning at Highlander
how to organize—
protest songs on standby,
“Which side are you on?”
When you start deporting our people,
“We shall not be moved.”
 . 
Spill out Bibles that spell out
the commandments you break,
that the meek shall inherit the Earth.
Go ahead. Drill, Baby, drill.
We see clearly still—
through each hole
drilled long ago into these lands
and through Christ’s hands.
 . 
Those first four years
were just a drill.
 . 
This is not a Drill.
I repeat. This is not a Drill:
 . 
children under school desks,
hands covering heads.
Hands off what’s in and out of their heads!
From redwood forests to blue ridge mountains,
children too hungry to learn,
hands off Head Start,
14-year-old girls,
and countless young women.
You can no longer drill.
 . 
Hilda Downer, High Country Poet Laureate
 . 
Joseph Bathanti passed your call onto me as he knows I am Appalachian through and through. I live about 50 miles from where I grew up beside the oldest mica mines in the world. Mitchell County is mineral laden, and now threatened by AI’s demand. When I wrote this poem, I was only thinking about the greed behind the use of fossil fuels, decimating the environment, and denying global warming. Now, the demon is sniffing at the windows of my home. Thank you for considering this highly political poem I read at the first Hands Off Rally in my town of Boone, NC. However, I am sure you might be expecting something more like the second poem I am sending you, Mother Tree.
— Hilda
 . 
✾
 . 
Mother Tree
The way the Mother Tree cares for the forest
makes me ashamed of selfish humans.
The tall Mother Tree can harvest more sun
though holes leak light from her leaf-knit shawl
to showcase a pink lady’s-slipper here
or pat a moss draped root there.
Through phototropism and photosynthesis,
she toils harder than the rest
to produce excess carbon and sugar
for sharing not only with her saplings
but also with other species,
both deciduous and conifer.
She can recognize her own kin
but serves the whole community.
Her roots spread far, symbiotic with fungi
that network with other trees.
If one is sick, she sends healing nutrients.
If one is in danger, she warns them all.
Loggers that cut the big trees
allow frail ones to grow,
leaving the forest to pine
without diversity.
Think of the old growth forest
where the Mother Tree lay dying.
Think of the roads cut through.
Just one house is built,
and gone is the sharp, dark smell of black walnut.
Gone is the wizened Carolina hemlock, twisted at its base.
Think of the trees felled,
replaced by utility poles
for communication far inferior
to the Mother Tree’s instinctive telepathy.
I think of my own mother, gone now,
her mind gone long before.
What traditions still bind us?
After my grandmother passed,
aunts, uncles, and cousins no longer met in Bandana
for a fried chicken dinner after church
or made an apple stack cake for the Buchanan reunion
after the Decoration at Silver Chapel Church.
We all grew up playing house under the umbrella shade of laurel,
disclosing angry crawfish under creek rocks,
and plummeting from grapevine swings.
How do we recognize our kinship
or ourselves
if not in the chapel of the woods?
The entrance hugs us
with the wide-open arms of orange azalea.
Our traditions rest upon a log pew
cushioned with the clean scent of moss and musky mushrooms,
centered by autumn’s kaleidoscope;
flanked by crepuscular rays
filtered by the Mother Tree.
 . 
Hilda Downer, High Country Poet Laureate
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
A Wood
 . 
Some would distinguish nothing here but oaks,
Proud heads conversant with the power and glory
Of heaven’s rays or heaven’s thunderstrokes,
And adumbrators to the understory,
Where, in their shade, small trees of modest leanings
Contend for light and are content with gleanings.
 . 
And yet here’s dogwood: overshadowed, small,
But not inclined to droop and count its losses,
It cranes its way to sunlight after all,
And signs the air of May with Maltese crosses.
And here’s witch hazel, that from underneath
Great vacant boughs will bloom in winter’s teeth.
 . 
Given a source of light so far away
That nothing, short or tall, comes very near it,
Would it not take a proper fool to say
That any tree has not the proper spirit?
Air, water, earth and fire are to be blended,
But no one style, I think, is recommended.
 . 
Richard Wilbur
selected by Paul Karnowski
 . 
The trees in Wilbur’s woods remind us that we all live together, and each of us, big or small, has an important role to play.
— Paul
 . 
✾
 . 
Gaze
 . 
How to spend my days,
and where to fix my gaze?
 . 
Out a wistful window,
to soar with swirling swallows,
brushing wings against
the summer sky.
 . 
Or at the misty mirror,
looking at a lump of flesh
tethered to the ground,
no feathers to be found.
 . 
Paul Karnowski
first published in Grey Sparrow Journal, January, 2026
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.   
— Aldo Leopold
 . 
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.     
— Aldo Leopold
 . 
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
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22
 . 

Posted in Ecopoetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Poetry and Earth – Bear & Bird

April 23, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

Bear Crop 02

Artist – Linda French Griffin

 . 
[ poems by Les Brown, Maura High, Walter de la Mare, Jane Western, 
Jennie Boyd Bull, Sam Barbee, Julia Nunnally Duncan ]
 . 
The Bear
 . 
The black bear lies beside
our green plastic picnic table,
sprawled on the grass like a Labrador.
Her pale brown muzzle,
tipped by black twitching nose,
rests on her massive paw.
 . 
She is dark. Her two-inch
claws curl from rough
gray pads haloed with long hair.
Her midnight coat is smooth,
with a hint of brown
shining in the early morning sun.
 . 
Her ears are round and soft,
erect and dark inside, armed to hear
the rustling of mice, vole or rabbit.
Her relaxed core is ready to wake,
to pounce her massive frame
upon the furry morsels.
 . 
Her sense of smell
acute for finding gnawing
grub, tender roots, ripe
huckleberries on distant bushes.
She knows her mate
by his musky marks.
 . 
She will rise and wander
the forest into the night,
under the dense laurel canopy,
travel to meadows and cliffs
under Ursa major in the indigo sky
and drink in reflected moonlight.
 . 
Unlike Calisto who was placed
among the stars, she is not safe
as she returns to the deep woods
to live with baying dog,
and men in camouflage
cheating the natural order.
 . 
Les Brown
 . 
This poem came from seeing a bear lying outside our window in the mountains where it taught us to remove our bird feeders. I was reflecting on the peaceful majestic bear and the dangerous world it had to return to.
— Les
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Native
 . 
There’s Merrill
with his binoculars
in the Holly Shelter Game Land
in high pocosin with birds
 . 
so many birds
with their songs silhouettes plumage
perch and flight patterns
 . 
as in the trees and sky
over Paradise
patterns
created and evolving
before the Great Naming
 . 
he names them
in languages that birds fly through
 . 
tsi’squa song sparrow ti’nti’wa Passiformes
among the pond pine and titi
greenbrier gallberry
sundew pitcher plants
calling
 . 
chitter chek-check tweet
warblers cardinals finches
call
and he calls back to them
 . 
one by one
as if they were kin and he was glad
to be among them again
 . 
Maura High 
 . 
It was hard to choose just one poem that celebrated the Earth, but this one, “Native,” comes closest to demonstrating what’s so important about conserving our heritage landscapes and how vital the people are who protect and guide us through them. I visited this 64,000-acre game land on a field trip and was inspired not only by the land but also by the person who features in the poem, by his delight, knowledge, respect, and sense of connection with this environment. 
— Maura
 . 
bird
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
The Listeners
 . 
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
 .  . Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
 .  . Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
 .  . Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
 .  . ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
 .  . No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
 .  . Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
 .  . That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
 .  . To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
 .  . That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
 .  . By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
 .  . Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
 .  . ‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
 .  . Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
 .  . That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
 .  . Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
 .  . From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
 .  . And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
 .  . When the plunging hoofs were gone.
 . 
Walter de La Mare
selected by Jane Western
 . 
I think the poems [presented this month for Earth Day] clearly shine a light on “place,” the setting, humans on the earth, and how it is that we are solitary individuals yet never alone…. These paths we walk do guide us toward deep connections.
— Jane
 . 
❀
 . 
Morning Prayer
 . 
Let us pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.
Most powerful Lord of all Creation,
We praise you in the movement of the Universe:
in the great spinning Galaxy,
in every tiny particle quivering with your Spirit,
in the gentle breeze and the forceful hurricane.
 . 
We praise you in the foundations of the Earth:
from the towering mountain ridges
to the low soft sandy beaches.
The living desert declares your majesty.
 . 
We praise you, O Creator, in the miracle of living water:
Sustainer of all life; without it, there is nothing.
In the falling rain, trickling streams, muddy rivers,
calm lakes and crashing oceans, your power humbles us.
In the cool quenching of our thirst, we praise your name!
 . 
We praise you in the comforting glow of the firelight:
where, throughout  the millennia, your people have safely gathered
sharing nourishment and preserving your ancient stories.
 . 
Kindle this same flame in our hearts now.
Spark our self-awareness,
that we can confess our own transgressions.
Burn away our sins of the past.
Purify our hearts that we may humbly accept your forgiveness.
Release in us the flame of forgiveness toward others.
 . 
Fill us with Your Love, O God:
Hear our prayers of intercession for those who cannot help themselves.
Transform our hearts into vessels of mercy, into wells of living water,
that we may become your disciples in service to your world.
 . 
We offer thanks to you for claiming us as your own.
We thank you for who we are and all we have.
It is your spirit in us, around us, and your love poured out for all humanity,
through the sacrifice of your Son Jesus,
for which we are grateful beyond measure.
 . 
Now, with open hearts, we set our minds on trusting you alone.
Position us according to your perfect will
that your love will overflow through us
to all we serve in your Holy Name, from this day forward.
 . 
And so it is, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.
 . 
Jane Western
 .  . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Bird Play
 . 
Birds outside my window
flit to feeder
peck at seeds
perch on railing,
Brilliant cardinal pair
feeds beak to beak
seed to seed.
Woodpecker trundles backward down trunk
nuthatch descends headfirst
titmice and chickadees cavort.
Mourning doves flock below
juncos scratch for seed
song sparrow scavenges.
All play together in home of
sun and wind
leaf and twig
moon and dew.
 . 
Jennie Boyd Bull 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Garden Variety
 . 
Treated timbers frame your raised garden.
Herb boxes: oregano beside mint, and other zest
for your kitchen. Beds burgeoned by your fingers,
raring, seeds rumbling to yield sprigs.
Recommended watering to energize sectors of pods.
 . 
But marring an impeccable walk we bricked-in last year,
familiar weeds flower, screech among your grids.
Each tract sprouts spoils, silver and waxen.
Frilly buds flare, trespass against your grace.
Sour flavors to defile delicate pallet. Invasive
 . 
spines to pilfer sun showers. Corrupt our vision!
Lamb’s ear erupts. Dandelions rage along loam edges.
You react, wring roots. Bristly leaves weep wicked screams.
Defending nature’s zeal, benign growth asserts leniency.
Plead amnesty for each frilly cousin, likewise sun-born.
 . 
Sam Barbee
 . 
“Garden Variety” addresses how we would have nature praise our efforts vs. nature’s essence. Even pesky weeds are part of the natural design.”
— Sam
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Nature
 . 
Yesterday I saw a sharp-shinned hawk
grasping a sparrow in its talons
as it flew toward the woods.
The small bird’s feathers sprinkled the air
as the hawk carried it away.
Later, my husband explained to me
that the hawk would have eyases
in a nest now
and was taking food to her young.
Yet the image of the bird
trapped in the hawk’s clasp
has haunted me
like the memory of the crow
that stole a baby robin from the nest
in our maple tree,
so brazenly carrying the naked creature
through the air
while the parents frantically fluttered about,
chirping in distress.
I watched helpless and horrified
and wanted to kill the crow.
Robert Frost once observed that
nature was cruel,
and when I see the predators around me,
I have to agree.
 . 
Julia Nunnally Duncan
from When Time Was Suspended (Redhawk Publications, 2024)
 . 
I witnessed these incidents involving a hawk and a crow. These were sights that disturbed me, which I express in the poem. The cruelty of nature is my theme, although I understand that animal nature, the desire to survive, feed the young, etc., is nothing unusual. Since I observed the crow seizing the  baby bird and felt anger toward the crow, I have come to respect crows through observing their habits and researching them for my essay “Watching Crows.” In my research, I learned of their intelligence and fierce loyalty to family.
— Julia
 . 
*  eyas — the unfledged or nestling young of a raptor such as falcon or hawk
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
What I know of the Divine sciences and Holy Scriptures, I learnt in woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. Listen to a man of experience; thou wilt learn more in the woods than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a magister.
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux
 . 
If you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
 . 
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
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
 . 

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