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Archive for the ‘Ecopoetry’ Category

Saturday Share – Scott Owens

Posted in Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , on September 26, 2026| 2 Comments »

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Saturday morning readers share:
Scott Owens
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A History of Rivers
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It’s Monday.
I cross the Yadkin River again,
as I have every Monday for the two years
my grandson has been in this world,
as I did twice a month for 10 years
delivering my stepson to his father,
as I’ve done once a year for 30 years
heading to the beach for our family vacation.
And each of these have had return trips
where I’ve crossed the Yadkin again.
 . 
I don’t know how to count
the number of times I’ve crossed this river,
but each time I do, my eyes grow wider
to let more in, my skin tingles,
my breathing grows quiet and slow.
It’s not fear, not my daughter’s gephyrophobia,
but awe, excitement, anticipation,
as the earth falls away below me,
and I feel again the history of rivers
as borders separating here from there,
known from unknown, a simple crossing
of something beautiful into something so full
of potential it reawakens the life within me.
 . 
Scott Owens
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Needing No Heaven
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My mother sends me my childhood Bible.
I remember 53 years ago,
when we had little,
I would get myself up early
on Sunday mornings, make breakfast,
get dressed, catch the bus to church,
alone, hoping to find something more,
then praying I was sitting in the right seat,
the one with the lucky number taped to the bottom.
 . 
One time, I was.
This was the prize.
 . 
I read it three times through,
and occasionally again over the years,
looking for logic, marking lines,
The living God is among you,
Is with thee wheresoever thou goest,
gradually losing faith,
not in God,
but rather, in this God.
 . 
The marks are still there.
When you think that I am gone,
do not search for me in someone’s heaven.
I have already found heaven here.
Look for me in the earth you turn for planting.
 . 
Scott Owens
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Scott recently wrote to me that he’s been on a “nature statement kick.” If that means he is consciously thinking and writing about the relationship of us humans with the natural world, it doesn’t detract from the fact that all his poetry is colored, overtly or subtly, by that relationship. Scott and I have discussed how the four tasks of the naturalist are perfectly congruent with the tasks of the poet — pay attention, ask questions, make connections, share. Lately I’ve been thinking about a fifth imperative for the poet — remember. And isn’t memory also demanded of the naturalist? Our relationship with nature stretches across time, always changing and yet always anchored.
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I hope in those future days when I am not living on this Earth, my grandchildren will notice some September afternoon the wispy seeds of Burnweed drifting past them and remember me.
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Additional poetry by Scott Owens at Verse and Image:
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
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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Light Made Flesh and Blood – Wendell Berry

Posted in Ecopoetry, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , on September 4, 2026| 2 Comments »

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4 poems by Wendell Berry from Sabbaths,
North Point Press, San Francisco CA; © 1987
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1979 – I
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I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
 . 
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
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Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
 . 
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing
the day turns, the trees move.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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1979 – VII
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What if, in the high restful sanctuary
That keeps the memory of Paradise,
We’re followed by the drone of history
And greed’s poisonous fumes still burn our eyes?
 . 
Disharmony recalls us to our work.
From Heavenly work of light and wind and leaf
We must turn back into the peopled dark
Of our unraveling century, the grief
 . 
Of waste, the agony of haste and noise.
It is a hard return from Sabbath rest
To lifework of the fields, yet we rejoice,
Returning, less condemned in being blessed
 . 
By vision of what human work can make:
A harmony between wood-land and field,
The world as it was given for love’s sake,
The world by love and loving work revealed
 . 
As given to our children and our Maker.
In that healed harmony the world is used
But not destroyed, the Giver and the taker
Joined, the taker blessed, in the unabused
 . 
Gift that nurtures and protects. Then workday
and Sabbath live together in one place.
Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony
is our one possibility of peace.
 . 
When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme
That stirs in distant memory the whole
First Sabbath’s song that no largess of time
Or hope or sorrow wholly can recall.
 . 
But harmony of earth is Heaven-made,
Heaven-making, is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
An earthly music magnified in air.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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1981
 . 
Here where the world is being made,
No human hand required,
A man may come, somewhat afraid
Always, and somewhat tired,
 . 
For he comes ignorant and alone
From work and worry of
A human place, in soul and bone
The ache of human love;
 . 
He may come and be still, not go
Toward any chosen aim
Or stay for what he thinks is so.
Setting aside his claim
 . 
On all things fallen in his plight,
His mind may move with leaves,
Wind-shaken, in and out of light,
And live as the light lives,
 . 
And live as the Creation sings
In covert, two clear notes,
And waits; then two clear answerings
Come from more distant throats—
 . 
May live a while with light, shaking
In high leaves, or delayed
In halts of song, submit to making,
The shape of what is made.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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1980 – IV
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The frog with lichened back and golden thigh
Sits still, almost invisible
On leafed and lichened stem,
Invisibility
Its sign of being at home
There in its given place, and well.
 . 
The warbler with its quivering striped throat
Would live almost beyond my sight,
Almost beyond belief,
But for its double note—
Among high leaves a leaf,
At ease, at home in air and light.
 . 
And I, through woods and fields, through fallen days
Am passing to where I belong:
At home, at ease, and well,
In Sabbaths of this place
Almost invisible,
Toward which I go from song to song.
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme . . .
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Wendell Berry, (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026) was a Kentucky farmer on land his great-great-grandfather bought after the war of 1812. And he was a poet, novelist, essayist, advocate, activist, and environmentalist, whose many award include the 2010 National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barak Obama. Place is a character in all that Wendell Berry has written. The land is his anchor. The contrast of field and woods, man-tilled earth versus wild spaces, is a constant theme, and not in the sense of conflict or incompatibility but with the admonition that field and wood must converge in our reverence and in our stewardship. We must care for our planet or perish. He listened and heard the song of Creation. He opens our ears, our eyes, our souls to know that song as well.
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❀
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Wendell Erdman Berry obituary at the Kentucky Lantern:
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Wendell Berry biography and letters at The Poetry Foundation:
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
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
 . 

Mountains-to-Sea Trail, Surry County NC

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MST, Doughton Park, Blue Ridge Parkway

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Poetry and Earth – Coastal

Posted in Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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[ poems by West Carteret High School Students Aurora Goodyear,
Bryana Fessler, Xristos, M., Yaritza Lopez-Castro, 
and their science teacher Jessi Waugh ]
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Back Field Ecosystem
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The sun sits high at 8:30,
Warming the dark, quiet soil.
Everything feels just right,
Like the field is slowly waking up.
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A hawk glides across the sky,
Silent but watching everything below.
A butterfly drifts without a path,
While a ladybug crawls, small but bright.
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Leaf litter crunches underfoot,
Pinecones rest, sharp and still.
Green shrubs fill the space with life,
Hiding more than you can see at first.
 . 
Everything here has a place,
From the ground to the open air.
It may not look simple from far away,
But up close, it’s full of life.
 . 
Aurora Goodyear
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❀
 . 
Let us probe the silent places. Let us seek what luck betides us. There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam too. And the Wild is calling, calling – let us go.
— Robert Service, Call of the Wild
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Out in the Sun
 . 
In the sun I lay so bright
Waiting patiently for the night.
 . 
The birds sing
The flowers dance,
Right beside me
Lay the ants
Bringing food,
To their colony below
 . 
And then December comes
The snow, powdery white
Covering the plain
I wonder, do these creatures
Have a name?
 . 
Or are these creatures just
Like me, figuring out where
And who they want to be.
 . 
Bryana Fessler
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❀
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Underlying the beauty of the spectacle there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of that meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to the riddle is hidden. 
— Rachel Carson
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Bees
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They say a bumblebee is incapable of flight.
 . 
Its tiny wings cannot produce enough lift
to fly and its fat body only drags it down.
 . 
Other creatures such as butterflies
and flies have the lift for flight while bees
do not.
 . 
That is because bumblebees defy
the laws of aviation, flying anyways.
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Xristos, M.
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❀
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Aerodynamically the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it, so it goes on flying anyway.
— Mary Kay Ash
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❀    ❀    ❀
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The Tree
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The tree – its stature,
its branches –
the purest emerald
of the path –
unveiling its magic
before my eyes.
What a beautiful and sweet song!
The birds of the path
tweet within your heart.
 . 
Yaritza Lopez-Castro
 . 
❀
 . 
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a song bird will come. 
— Chinese proverb
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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Baby Snapper, West Carteret High School

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Photos by Jessi Waugh

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The World in a Grain of Sand
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These feet have never left North America
have crossed fewer than fifty meridians
they remain on long familiar land
 . 
But the mind travels farther than the body roams
I’ve seen the world in a grain of sand
scanned the beaches of Normandy and Spain
 . 
My co-teacher exchanged local sand
with pen pals via snail mail
assembled an unrivaled collection
 . 
When he shared his horde
I poured each vial into a petri dish
sealed the sides, labeled with location
 . 
Saudi Arabia, bleach white
New Zealand, volcanic black
Dominican Republic, fine as dust
 . 
I have seen Scotland’s weathered highlands
studied stones cast by the gods of Mt. Olympus
sifted silt gleaned from Utah’s red lakes
 . 
These are the Florida Keys
can you feel the sea breeze
see the coral ground to brilliant snow
 . 
For twenty years I’ve yearned
to walk the coast of County Cork
for now, I magnify its mythic grains and dream
 . 
Jessi Waugh
 . 
The back soccer field continues to be a great place for the Biodiversity Lab. This year, we found two baby snapping turtles, a baby alligator, and the salamander in this area. A student returned the snapping turtle to the creek beside the field. Classes are currently designing a sign for this freshwater creek. The winning sign design will be made into a metal sign by a local graphic design company, thanks to a grant. 
— Jessi
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❁✾✿
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West Carteret High School is in Morehead City, North Carolina, on the Atlantic coast of 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 14 years. Her students are all 9th & 10th grade, ages 14-16. The poems shared here are from both the honors and standard classes. Jessi holds a Master’s in Teaching Secondary Science and an undergraduate Biology degree and tells me,  I like teaching this course and age group; it’s my niche.
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Thanks always to my outdoor companion Mike Barnett, who plies me with a continuous treasure of thoughtful quotations about nature, science, wonder, and discovery.
 . 
And Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
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_0880, tree
 . 

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