ecology | V E R S E and I M A G E

Archive for the ‘ecology’ Category

Spring. Whatever.

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Ecopoetry, haiku, imagery, Jacar Press, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, nature, nature photography, nature poetry, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on May 9, 2025| 2 Comments »

[with 3 poems by Kathryn Kirkpatrick]

Turbulence

Of the stomach lifting. Of the weightless

where I was and am again variety.

Sway and crack, our craft. Slalom

the wind. So much carbon in the currents.

Of the climate kind. Of the jerk and twack.

Of the hurtling toward. Shake right out

of our human. As if we might not

settle back into these bodies,

but land instead in someone else.

Yet the hare far below isn’t empty

to receive us. Neither is the horse.

They have their own embodied plans.

We will have to settle beside ourselves

Blurred boundaries and all. Bump,

rattle, and creak. Our enlightened selves

grasp cokes, play solitaire, read, sleep,

going on as if what’s happening isn’t.

With more than prayers

holding us up, we are nonetheless

tossed in the vastness.

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

❦ ❦ ❦

ah spring spring

how great is spring!

and so on

Bashō (1644-1694)

Basho has perfectly snared my mood this morning. I am reading Spring haiku at SeasonWords.com: Ah, Winter vanquished!, Ah, new life!, blah, blah, blah. I am not feeling newly lively these days, especially not as the sun so gaily rises. By day I seem to be the rock between two storms, my father and my son, but by 4 AM I have eroded to sand and the bed is far too gritty for sleep. Now this haiku blog offers a prompt for the season and encourages sharing? Here are my Spring lines:

what to say

when everyone’s “spring, spring” –

toads trilling

In her book Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All, Charlotte Digregorio states, Wherever one lives, one experiences changing seasons. The haiku’s brief flash illuminates one specific moment. We read the terse lines and might recognize where we are, but certainly, and more critically, we do know precisely when we are. Perhaps we have never shared the haiku’s circumscribed space, but we do share the time of pollen, the humidity, crisp crackling leaves, the shivers. A moment’s experience broadens into a communal truth.

In that sense, haiku becomes less an instruction in encountering nature and more an invitation to shared humanity. Besides the experience of changing seasons, the thing we all share is the experience of suffering. A moment’s observation may stand in as a piercing metaphor: Spring’s anticipation, Summer’s lassitude, Autumn’s anxiety, Winter’s dread. And perhaps pricked by that dart of connection upon reading a haiku, we might also share one more thing – joy.

Just to be fair, I imagine my Spring haiku is not really an indictment of inane people chattering around me. On a dark night after rain, the lonesome trill of an American toad rising from down in the woods is a peace offering. My son and I stood on the deck last night and heard it together. Yes, it was very dark. This morning, light has returned. Again. Oh my. The season rolls on.

❦

In 1685, the Japanese astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai adapted the 24 Solar Terms of the Chinese calendar for Japan and created 72 seasons. As we learn at SeasonWords.com, these 72 seasons “offer a poetic journey through the Japanese year in which the land awakens and blooms with life and activity before returning to slumber.” Mark, the site’s curator and naturalist, shares lessons from nature corresponding to the seasons; haiku both ancient and modern that complement the lesson; and craft tips / kigo with a prompt and an invitation. Readers share their haiku and receive commentary.

Visit https://seasonwords.com/ and subscribe to receive periodic postings in your mailbox!

❦ ❦ ❦

The Ridge

One day I found the outline of a deer

in the snow. She’d slept on the old logging road

above our home, curled against the cold.

Her imprint on a trail I’d walked for

twenty years was intricate and vulnerable

as I now feel since strangers bought this land.

their cameras

nailed to the trunks of trees

Christ

At first I waved. New to the neighborhood,

the seemed shy. Hovering at the side

of the road with their harnessed dogs, they walked

harnessed too, shoulders hunched, eyes averted.

About their money I didn’t then know, or

Appalachian families letting go of land.

orange flags

festoon the property lines

orioles in snow

What we had of commons among

hill people here is gone, our hollow hollowed

out, our waves, our lifted heads, our calls across

casual borders fretted now by registered

mail. “Not authorized.” “Legal action.” They’ve

no bonds to sunder because they’ve no bonds made.

camera 1

my shetland sheepdog framed

first day of spring

Surveyed for surveillance, the ridge. But I

can love what I don’t own. I miss the oaks,

their wide-girthed stillness. I miss the mountain’s

spine. Across family lands and state lines,

through Cherokee and Appalachian time,

the mountains stay. The mountains stay. They stay.

a taloned sun sets

the red-tailed hawk

needs no human hand

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

❦ ❦ ❦

Creatures – so we are. We seek what all creatures seek, but especially we seek the closeness of other creatures. Kathryn Kirkpatrick is visited by crows and grieves for house wrens dying and for cows separated from their calves. She reveals her creature’s struggle and confusion as she loses her mother. She is not afraid to say that she hesitates to speak of death because every creature must face death but fears to do so. She reveals moments and connections and we readers look about us to discover her light is casting our own shadow. And in the closing section of Creature, Kathryn Kirkpatrick has written the finest collection of dog poems I’ve read in twenty years.

Creature by Kathryn Kirkpatrick at Jacar Press: HERE.

❦ ❦ ❦

On Finding Monarch Caterpillars in September

And whatever love a parent

feels stealing bread for a starving

child, I have it as I dig by

the flimsy light of my bargain

headlamp, having driven miles for the last

of the chain-store milkweed, which will

feed these ravenous young in their striped

skins, who are no metaphor, who stand for

themselves only, though in my ecological

worry, my long-range fright, I am surely

standing for something as I shovel in the dark.

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

In their multi-generational migration pattern, the endangered monarch butterfly bears its fourth generation in September and October. Rather than dying after two to six weeks as the earlier generations do, this generation migrates to warmer climates like California and Mexico, living six to eight months before starting the process again. – K.K.

❦ ❦ ❦

Read Full Post »

Ridges and Ruins – Poems for the Earth

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, tagged Bill Griffin, Earth Day, Earth Day 2025, Earth Day Every Day, ecology, Ecopoetry, imagery, Jessi Waugh, nature, nature photography, nature poetry, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing, West Carteret High School on April 29, 2025| 5 Comments »

[poems selected by and written by the students

of West Carteret High School, Morehead City, North Carolina, USA]

Earlier this month I asked Jessi Waugh, teacher/scientist/poet and instructor in Earth and Environmental Science, if she would like to have her high school students contribute Poems for the Earth. Jessi replied Yes! and then this:

Several days before the poem-writing lesson, I gave my students the assignment to post an EcoPoem to a class discussion. They could post any poem or song lyrics related to nature. In this discussion format, students are able to see each other’s posts and like or comment. Few interacted, but they did see each other’s poems as I scrolled through the class submissions.

This assignment saw some of the expected favorites: Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss. It also saw poems obviously chosen by a Google Search for “ecopoem example,” as I knew it would. But I got unexpected and delightful responses as well, such as:

Stick your leaves back on

My mother planted you the day I was born.

I grew with you.

I remember trying to stick your leaves back on in autumn;

I was scared of you changing.

Yet as time passed, my attempts stood no chance.

The cruel seasons ripped apart your branches.

The cruel season ripped me apart, too.

You looked so unrecognizable by the time winter ended,

I didn’t even wanna be near you.

My mother made me blow out a candle for you every year.

She hasn’t lit one in 1…2…3… I lost count.

I grew without you.

You stood tall, but I only kept changing.

I was scared of changing.

I’m 16 now.

A storm ripped you from the earth.

I’m trying to stick your leaves back on.

I wish you could do the same to me.

Emily M

published March 27, 2024 at https://redroompoetry.org/student-poems/stick-your-leaves-back-on/

❦

The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature’s law is wrong it

learned to walk without having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,

it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

when no one else ever cared.

Tupac Shakur

from the book by the same title; more at https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/the-rose-that-grew-from-concrete

❦ ❦ ❦

Before they wrote a poem, Jessi gave her students this assignment: “Analyze the connections between the biosphere and other Earth systems (geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere).” She took them to the back soccer field at their school, which is surrounded on three sides by forest and powerline land. She had cut 2′ x 2′ pieces of an old tarp for them to sit on, and once they were outdoors she handed them a clipboard along with the assignment log sheet and told them to sit facing the forest and far enough apart so they couldn’t distract each other.

When we first got out there, many students sat in the middle of the field or facing away from the forest, and I came around to encourage them to sit near the wild areas and turn towards them. Most did. Others were not comfortable and chose to stand or remain near the middle of the field, especially girls wary of jumping spiders.

Students documented the abiotic and biotic factors in the ecosystem, reinforcing those terms, and created a food web with the 10 organisms they observed. These were concepts from class (trophic level, energy flow, limiting factors) put into practice. They then answered a series of questions about interactions between ecosystem components and biodiversity, and then crafted their poems, all while outside.

Before taking them outside that day, I read the students one of my own poems, Dunation, but didn’t tell them it was mine. I told them to listen for the repetition of sounds and them suggested they repeat sounds in their poems as an easy literary device.

It was a beautiful day, perfect for sitting in the back field for an hour. We saw at least 20 species between all the different insects, herbaceous perennials, trees, and birds. Likely closer to 50. In general, students were quiet and reflective and did a great job of observing the ecosystem. – Jessi Waugh

❦ ❦ ❦

selected student poems . . .

The Great Outdoors

When I step outside to the great outdoors

I see nothing but change, out of our culture nothing

stays the same

not the trees, not the grass, not the very ground you stand on

everything around us is just waiting on its moment

When I step outside to the great outdoors

I notice change is inevitable but nothing to fear

everything changes even just saying

“the last time I was here”

or the time and age you got, like the sound

of the creek, of the animals above, or even the things

that all of us take for granted like a mother’s love

Everything changes

please don’t be afraid

be glad you have what you have

and enjoy the change

Kevin Hunter, Student at West Carteret High School

❦

In the Back Soccer Field

With all these limiting beige walls I’m stuck with

for over 5 hours a day, it feels

refreshing to see the leaves, feel the breeze

crunch the brittle soil like the wandering ant

I make my pilgrimage

toward NATURE

My eyes are stimulated by something that isn’t

a screen but the echoes of human

development still make their unpleasant sounds

nature is something that can’t be replicated

truly by plastic or plaster models or

the dull green of money, as nature is

VIBRANT and cannot be comprehended by man

no matter what

Kyndall Griffin, Student at West Carteret High School

❦

Life Cycle

Green

Life abounds

Sunlight kisses leaves

Insects buzz, a symphony of life

Grass

Tiny world

Hidden, teeming

spiders spin, frogs leap

nature’s dance, a vibrant scene

Balance

Stillness

Whispers softly

Decomposers working

Life to death, death into life

Cycle

Jazireyah Johnson, Student at West Carteret High School

❦ ❦ ❦

and another favorite selected by Jessi’s students . . .

rises the moon

Days seem sometimes as if they’ll never end

Sun digs its heels to taunt you

But after sunlit days, one thing stays the same

Rises the moon

Days fade into a watercolour blur

Memories swim and haunt you

But look into the lake, shimmering like smoke

Rises the moon

Oh-oh, close your weary eyes

I promise you that soon the autumn comes

To darken fading summer skies

Breathe, breathe, breathe

Days pull you down just like a sinking ship

Floating is getting harder

But tread the water, child, and know that meanwhile

Rises the moon

Days pull you up just like a daffodil

Uprooted from its garden

They’ll tell you what you owe, but know even so

Rises the moon

You’ll be visited by sleep

I promise you that soon the autumn comes

To steal away each dream you keep

Breathe, breathe, breathe

lyrics and music by Liana Flores

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xddn3kJhhY

❦ ❦ ❦

Dunation

The sorrows they pile heart-high

head-high, sky-high like peaks

of primary dunes against winter-white

an accumulation of minutia

a hummock too precipitous to persist

Spring’s avalanche comes

grains slip-slide down dune slipfaces

so suddenly, the sound akin to arctic ice breaking

tern eggs crackling, oak limbs fracturing

in furious full-February gales

Hearts, heads, skies on fire

here comes March’s awakening

dunes crash-topple into manageable talus

Here we come

tip-toeing across the tops

paper children tumbling

over ridges and ruins

Jessi Waugh, Earth and Environmental Science Teacher, West Carteret High School

The main reaction from students to this project was appreciation for the time sitting outdoors, and they enjoy the social aspect of posting “favorite’ ecopoems on our class discussions. As much as I’d like to turn it into a week of poetry discussions, that would be terribly off-topic for my science class, and I used it primarily as a way to reflect on the connections between earth’s “spheres” (atmo, hydro, litho, geo) and how they interact in ecosystems. In general, I notice that students are disillusioned with politics and technology. They, like all students I’ve taught, enjoy hands-on experience and labs. I think poetry and teens could mix well in many places. – Jessi Waugh

❦ ❦ ❦

West Carteret High School is in Morehead City, North Carolina, in the southeastern USA. It is a public 9-12th grade high school, with about 1100 students. Approximately 40% of students are economically disadvantaged. Jessi Waugh teaches Earth and Environmental Science, since 2000 a required course for graduation. She also teaches Biology and Marine Science as needed, and has been a teacher for 12 years. Her students are all 9th & 10th grade, ages 14-16. The poems submitted are from both the honors and standard classes. She holds a Master’s in Teaching Secondary Science and an undergraduate Biology degree. I like teaching this course and age group; it’s my niche.

❦ ❦ ❦

Read Full Post »

Earth Day 2025 – Poems for the Earth

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, tagged Bill Griffin, Earth Day, ecology, Ecopoetry, nature photography, nature poetry, NC Poets, poetry on April 22, 2025| 5 Comments »

[poems by Veiga Simões, Barbara Conrad, Mary Oliver, Camille Dungy –

selected and shared by Christina Baumis, David Radavich,

Scott Owens, Bill Griffin]

Ao Viandante

(To the Person Who Passes Through This Place)

You that pass and raise your arm to me

before you hurt me, look at me well.

I am the heat of your home in the cold winter nights.

I am the friendly shade that you find

when walking under the August sun

And my fruits are appetizing freshness

That satisfy your thirst on the way.

I am the friendly beam of your house, the board of your table

the bed in which you rest and the wood of your boat.

I am handle of your hoe, the door of your dwelling

the wood of your cradle and of your own coffin.

I am the bread of goodness and the flower of beauty.

You that pass, look at me well and do no harm.

Veiga Simões

a tree with a poem on sign beneath it, located in Lisbon, Portugal.

https://www.kruckeberg.org/a-tree-poem/

This poem brings into stark view how we use and harm trees in a final plea from the tree; “You pass, look at me well and do no harm.” The poem certainly made me ponder the consideration of a grove of trees and what they give of themselves for us and our community over generations from their community. As a nature lover who enjoys walks under and among trees, trees had my gratitude already, yet this poem enhanced it even more. The poem is written almost a caveat, testimonial, or witness statement from the specific tree in Lisbon. The article in which this appeared had a nice side note about the relationship between tree canopies and crime rates, too. – Christina Baumis

❦

Evergreen trees are like nature’s high rises; their community intermingles to sustain ecosystems as well as us. Posted on the California Urban Forests Councils’ Facebook Page (published on January 21, 2024) from their Haiku contest 2024.

❦❦❦

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?’ If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. … To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. – Aldo Leopold

❦❦❦

Blue in Winter, Blame the Moon

+++ after a New York Times article on biological rhythms,

+++ peppered with phrases from the dining section

Blue in winter, blame the moon, say the scientists

for anyone living dark in the northern latitudes.

Overeating, sleeping in fits, activity cycles

shifted—even for mutant hamsters and fruit flies.

We trudge through cabbage season, tongue tingling

at the thought of gumbo and Sazerac, more laissez-faire

than the fusty French. Earth spins and the moon

thumps inside our cells. Trillions of clocks, ticking, ticking.

The universe feels it. Some cataclysm must have caused

our nights to topple like this, seasons spliced

like a butchered hog. We’re a mélange of earth crust

and asteroid dust—yes, that asteroid,

ejected into space, continuing as moon, tilting

primordial earth. We are orbs of something

we can’t quite claim. A recipe for stardust.

Chickpeas coming home to roost.

Barbara Conrad

I have long been a fan of Barbara Conrad’s poetry, admiring her commitment to social justice causes. This poem is remarkable for its yoking of the cosmic and the everyday, with climate change radiating in the nexus between galactic forces and routine human activities like eating and sleeping. Plus lots of colorful imagery you can feel and taste. The final line is a trenchant joke but also brings the interplanetary down to earth, namely to our dinner tables. Delicious! – David Radavich

❦

In the New Year

Ice is on the move—

broken off and floating freely

toward South Georgia Island

with a force to wipe out

indigenous life

and redirect our planet.

Those of us far away

see mostly waters rising,

rising, claiming

sand and beach houses

and boats of the wealthy

along lapping shores.

Carving of life

by the power of tides.

So we arrive at

another year: uprisings,

more ire in politics,

love reduced to islands

under siege,

we move inward

to protect ourselves—

bold nesting terns

or astronauts

in deepest space.

David Radavich

from Snapdragon

❦❦❦

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. . . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. – Aldo Leopold

❦❦❦

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

One of my favorite poems ever by one of my favorite poets ever. Wild Geese simply reminds me of my place in the intricate web of existence, in the universal community. – Scott Owens

❦

Wild and Precious

In Memoriam, Mary Oliver, 1/17/19

Seen at a distance this time of year

when trees are silhouettes

against a white sky

every shadow, I think,

must be a bird I’d like to identify,

waxwings, falcon, the largest of them

surely a beautiful hawk waiting

to chase a careless squirrel

across the yard and twice

around the trunk of the pecan tree,

rising on perfectly banked wings

so close it could almost reach out

and grasp the tuft of tail fur

dancing behind.

Often it turns out to be mistletoe,

nest, mere leftover leaves,

but even these speak

of life that was,

that will soon enough return,

and that thankfully always is.

Mary Oliver, the woman I’ve introduced

to more than 40 years of new students

as one of our greatest living poets,

died today,

but in view of trees, and birds,

and winter skies, and everything

that can be expressed in leaves,

it is impossible to think of her

as ever going away.

Scott Owens

❦❦❦

A philosopher has called this imponderable essence the numenon of material things. It stands in contradistinction to phenomenon, which is ponderable and predictable, even to the tossing and turning of the remotest star. The grouse is the numenon of the north woods, the blue jay of the hickory groves, the whisky-jack of the muskegs, the piñonero of the juniper foothills. – Aldo Leopold

❦❦❦

Trophic Cascade

After the reintroduction of gray wolves

to Yellowstone and, as anticipated, their culling

of deer, trees grew beyond the deer stunt

of the mid century. In their up reach

songbirds nested, who scattered

seed for underbrush, and in that cover

warrened snowshoe hare. Weasel and water shrew

returned, also vole, and came soon hawk

and falcon, bald eagle, kestrel, and with them

hawk shadow, falcon shadow. Eagle shade

and kestrel shade haunted newly-berried

runnels where mule deer no longer rummaged, cautious

as they were, now, of being surprised by wolves. Berries

brought bear, while undergrowth and willows, growing

now right down to the river, brought beavers,

who dam. Muskrats came to the dams, and tadpoles.

Came, too, the night song of the fathers

of tadpoles. With water striders, the dark

gray American dipper bobbed in fresh pools

of the river, and fish stayed, and the bear, who

fished, also culled deer fawns and to their kill scraps

came vulture and coyote, long gone in the region

until now, and their scat scattered seed, and more

trees, brush, and berries grew up along the river

that had run straight and so flooded but thus dammed,

compelled to meander, is less prone to overrun. Don’t

you tell me this is not the same as my story. All this

life born from one hungry animal, this whole,

new landscape, the course of the river changed,

I know this. I reintroduced myself to myself, this time

a mother. After which, nothing was ever the same.

Camille T. Dungy

from Trophic Cascade, Wesleyan University Press. August 16, 2021 at Poems.com

Yesterday walking beside Elkin Creek, Linda and I remarked that Wood Anemone and Star Chickweed like to grow together. Each white bloom points to its friend and neighbor. Why? Just the right balance of sun and shade for them both? Enough nourishment in the leaf mould but not too much? Are their tiny hands clasped beneath the surface in a group hug of mycorrhizal fungus?

I remind myself that the connections and community are so much vaster than I can even imagine. And I recall this final quotation by Aldo Leopold:

❦

. . . Modern natural history deals only incidentally with the identity of plants and animals, and only incidentally with their habits and behaviors. It deals principally with their relations to each other, their relations to the soil and water in which they grow, and their relations to the human beings who sing about “my Country” but see little or nothing of its inner workings. – Aldo Leopold

❦❦❦