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April 17, 2024
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While calling ourselves intelligent, we’ve lost touch with the natural world. As a result, we’ve lost touch with our own souls. I believe we can’t access our full intelligence and wisdom without some real connection to nature.
I think of soul as anything’s ultimate meaning which is held within. Soul is the blueprint inside of every created thing telling it what it is and what it can become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.
++++++ Richard Rohr
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This Hill
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this hill
crossed with broken pines and maples
lumpy with the burial mounds
of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane
of ‘thirty-eight) ++ out of their rotting hearts
generations rise trying once more
to become the forest
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just beyond them
tall enough to be called trees
in their youth like aspen++ a bouquet
of young beech is gathered
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they still wear last summer’s leaves
the lightest brown almost translucent
how their stubbornness decorates
the winter woods
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on this narrow path
ice holds the black undecaying
oak leaves in its crackling grip
oh ++ it’s become too hard to walk
++ ++ ++ a sunny patch ++ I’m suddenly
in water to my ankles ++ April
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Grace Paley (1922-2007)
from Fidelity, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux © 2008
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Shared by Joan Barasovska, Chapel Hill NC, who writes:
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I’m precisely connected to this poem in several ways. Grace Paley grew up in New York City — I grew up in nearby Philadelphia — but writes occasionally about her connection to the natural world, as I do. I live in a wooded area, and although the trees surrounding me aren’t birches or aspens, in mid-March they are bare and some “still wear last summer’s leaves.” When Paley wrote “This Hill” she was an older woman, and walking in the woods was becoming difficult, though the desire was there, all true for me.
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++++++ Joan
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The Day I Walked on Fire
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it wasn’t fire
it was ginkgo leaves
the sun lit them yellow
they were juicy with heat
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the day I walked on ginkgo leaves
I imagined they were fire
that my shoes were melting
that my feet were burning
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and I felt no pain
on that autumn day
when I burned to be
a holy woman
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Joan Barasovska
from Orange Tulips, Redhawk Publishing, © 2022
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When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
++++++ John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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Trees
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I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
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A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
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A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
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A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
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Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
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Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
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Joyce Kilmer (1886 – 1918)
https://poets.org/poem/trees; this poem is in the public domain
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Shared by Dee Neil, Elkin NC, who writes:
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We recited this poem every day in Mrs. Black’s first grade class and I have always loved it. I was supposed to go camping there [Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in western North Carolina] with my son’s family last summer, but I fell and broke my arm the week before we were scheduled to go. Still on my bucket list for this year. This is on the back of a hiking journal my daughter-in-law made for me for the trip.
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++++++ Dee
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Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.
++++++ Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Banding Hummingbirds
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+++ San Pedro River, Arizona
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+++ +++ I, who know nothing of ornithology,
wear sticker number nineteen. This release,
the last of the day, is mine. Under the awning
the ornithologist at the table puts a straw to her lips
and blows, parting the feathers to check for mites.
There are mites.
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+++ +++ She cradles the bird in one hand,
sexes it, names the species (Anna’s), and figures
the approximate age. Places it in a miniature sling
and weighs it, wraps the metal band around one leg.
I walk over to the designated grassy area,
both hands in my pockets.
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+++ +++ +++ The day is raw.
When it’s time, I hold out a palm, now warm.
The assistant fits the tubes of a stethoscope
to my ears, pressing the disc against my bird.
I hear a low whir, a tiny motor running in my hand.
Up to twelve hundred beats a minute, she says.
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+++ I, who know so little,
barely take a breath. My bird’s head is a knob
of red iridescence on the fleshy pad of my hand.
I am nothing but a convenient warming bench,
yet for now I am that bench. Warm.
His breast is thin-bone hollow, she says,
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+++ +++ where he should be round.
His eyes dark and still, his feet tucked
behind his body. He lies there, that tiny motor.
I don’t think of years ago, my mother, my father-
those I loved who, having lain down, never rose up.
For once, I know the worth,
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++++++ at least to me. What I don’t know
is whether this bird in hand will rouse
the way he did earlier, pinched between thumb
and index finger and tipped toward a feeder,
when he drank with conspicuous hunger.
You could see the tongue.
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Susan Laughter Meyers
from My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass, Winner of the 2012 Cider Press Review Editor’s Prize
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Shared by Richard Allen Taylor, Myrtle Beach SC, who writes:
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I was wracking my brain and finally it occurred to me to look on my bookshelf for Susan Laughter Meyers’s My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass. There are actually several poems in the book that might be candidates for Earth Day, but I was especially attracted to this one for several reasons. It reminds me that sometimes you can tell the story through the images (even if literal) rather than trying to “explain.” (I need to be reminded of that every day, it seems.) The poem has a little mystery. (Why are they banding the hummingbirds? Do the mites present a danger to their health? Are the bones in the chest supposed to be hollow or has the bird been sick? I’ll have to look this stuff up or else I won’t sleep tonight.)
++++++ Richard
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. . . when man and nature
got married they agreed never to divorce although
they knew they could never be happy & would have only
the one child Art who would bring mostly grief
to them both . . .
++++++ Firewood, Midquest, Fred Chappell
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To celebrate EARTH DAY 2024 we are featuring seven posts of poems submitted by readers – poems by William Blake to Walt Whitman, Robinson Jeffers to A.R.Ammons to Linda Pastan, and by a number of contemporary poets. Check in every day or two – connect to the earth and to each other!
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Bill, I am happy to see that you were able to use the Meyers poem, “Banding Hummingbirds,” and I’m following up here to report that I learned that certain species of mites use hummingbirds as transportation from plant to plant as they (the mites) perform their pollination duties. I also learned that banding birds is usually done to facilitate studies to track avian diseases. Whether the mites in Susan’s poem were a health problem (rather than, or in addition to their service as pollinators) is an open question. Also, regarding the JFK quote: Thank you for that. I don’t remember JFK saying anything about poetry and I’m glad to know he had a regard for poetry; that is not common for politicians today.
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Richard, great update! I did read that those mites have a split second to jump off the hummingbird onto the flower they’re used to frequenting, and if they pick the wrong flower they might be eaten by resident mites of a different species. Thanks again for sharing Susan’s wonderful poem. —B
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Also – I thought I remembered that Robert Frost read at JFK’s inauguration, and I found this. I would wish the poem to say “we are the land’s” rather than “the land is ours.”
“THE GIFT OUTRIGHT” BY ROBERT FROST (INAUGURAL POEM)
Poem recited at John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration by Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land’s
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she will become.
Robert Frost was the first poet to speak at the inauguration of a president, reciting from memory “The Gift Outright,” when the glare of the sun prevented him from reading “Dedication,” a poem he had written specially for the occasion.
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Especially nearing Earth Day I remember my dear friend and mentor Justice Manning, who had a long career with federal environmental agencies. Today I asked him to tell me more about his work:
Thanks for your interest in my career. Yes, on that first Earth Day I was working with one of the agencies, National Air Pollution Control Administration, that preceded EPA when Nixon created the EPA on Dec 3, 1970 (a similar office for water). Previous to that all environmental work was done under the auspices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. EPA brought all environmental work under a separate agency with cabinet level status.
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Jam packed with good stuff here! Susan Meyers wrote the most exquisite poetry about nature; it’s always a joy to reread her poems. I was surprised to see a poem by Grace Paley, whose fiction and sensibility I so admire–surprised because I wasn’t aware of her poetry, so thanks to Joan B. for that and her echoing poem. To add to the JFK info, yes, Frost had the traditional white man’s view–no mention of who was on the land first and pushed away: to write that “we” gave ourselves to the land “vaguely westward … unstoried” is quite blinkered. BTW, Jacquie Kennedy compiled The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
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Debra, thanks for more good stuff! I will check that link – fascinating. —B
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[…] of Charlotte in 2015. . Additional poetry by Richard Allen Taylor at Verse and Image: April, 2024 March, 2024 April, 2022 June, 2021 May, 2021 ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ . . Saturday Morning […]
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[…] room . Additional poetry by Joan Barasovska at Verse and Image: June, 2025 April, 2025 April, 2024 December, 2022 September, 2022 June, 2021 December, 2020 ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ . […]
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