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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/

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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What Claims Us – Poems for the Earth

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Earth Day, Ecopoetry, imagery, nature photography, nature poetry, NC Poets, poetry on April 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Golden Ragwort, Packera aurea

[poems by Charles Simic, Sylvia Plath, Katharine Spadaro,

Rosanna Warren – selected and shared by

Sharon Sharp, Kitsey Burns, Brad Strahan, Bill Griffin]

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photographs in today’s post are from the banks of Dutchman Creek,

Elkin NC, within a 2 meter diameter circle, taken on April 16, 2025

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Stone

Go inside a stone.

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it in a river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fishes come to knock on it

And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all:

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill-

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the star-charts

On the inner walls.

Charles Simic

Charles Simic’s Stone delights me because I’ve been a rockhound since childhood. This poem celebrates the mysterious, silent presence I’m aware of when holding stones, turning them in my hands, and wondering about the part of Earth’s – and even the cosmos’s – history each one represents. I keep stones as reminders of my own history, and clear scenes from various places emerge anew as I cradle these inanimate yet vibrant objects tying me to the natural world. I take Stone as an invitation to savor what is interior, silent, often overlooked, and unique in all aspects of nature.

I keep a wrinkled, often-read copy of Stone posted near some of my collected treasures, including the tektite that inspired my own poem, which follows. – Sharon Sharp

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Tektite

From my necklace chain dangles a shiny,

pocked, black-glass exclamation point,

minus the dot, full of chemical clues

about celestial origins and a likely

ancient collision: a comet or an

asteroid smashing into Earth.

Upon impact, melted shards

catapulted back into the

outer atmosphere, then

descended, cooling.

The hard rain that

pelted hundreds

of miles still

mesmerizes

dreamers.

Sharon A. Sharp

Snakewort (Liverwort), Conocephalum salebrosum

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The Beekeeper’s Daughter

A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black

The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.

Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,

A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.

Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,

You move among the many-breasted hives,

My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.

Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.

The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.

In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red

The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings

To father dynasties. The air is rich.

Here is a queenship no mother can contest—

A fruit that’s death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings.

In burrows narrow as a finger, solitary bees

Keep house among the grasses. Kneeling down

I set my eye to a hole-mouth and meet an eye

Round, green, disconsolate as a tear.

Father, bridegroom, in this Easter egg

Under the coronal of sugar roses

The queen bee marries the winter of your year.

Sylvia Plath

from The Kenyon Review, Autumn 1960 • Vol. XXII No. 4

I sat down this morning to read some Sylvia Plath poetry. I read The Bell Jar for the first time a few years ago, while at my Dad’s deathbed. You would think it would have been a poor choice for that time in my life, but truly I loved the book, so beautifully written. So my Earth Day selection from Plath is The Beekeeper’s Daughter. Bees are the ultimate example of community working together for good. This piece is very sensual and dark, in a way too. For me it is a reminder that light and darkness, life and death are an irrevocable part of the human experience. While we may be in a time of darkness and existential dread about the future of our earth, it is imperative now more than ever, that we seek community to sustain us.

Thank you, Bill, for these lovely poems you send each week. It brightens my week immensely when I am able to take the time to read them. – Kitsey Burns

Star Chickweed, Stellaria pubera

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The Day of the Funeral

Are you ready? they say, preparing to go. The search

how to say, how to feel, becomes a groping for jackets,

a finding of shoes. I look for a place to tie up my hair

and there is the cabinet, forever there.

Its mirrored backing can barely be seen

behind gold-speckled teacups, presents child-made,

crystal marching away to the past. Kneeling on carpet

I join in this scene and serious features

echo and float amongst

gilt generations of gently washed china.

An accordion of hands is fixing my hair.

Has anyone ever been ready?

Katherine Spadaro

from Visions International, Vol. 109

I often think of how much we have buried or pushed nature aside but she is there waiting and will sooner or later reclaim it all from us, our brief, brief dominion.

For earth day I thought of the subtext of this little poem from the past (mine). – Bradley Strahan

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Ghosts

In a lost corner of childhood

where marshland sleeps

beneath concrete,

the tide of evening

still climbs the forest wall.

Across the pond,

now drained and lawned,

the path looks westward

through the red receding flood of day.

There June is always a memory of redwings

singing with a chorus of frogs,

and in dank basements ghost cattails grow

through the temporary habitations of man.

Bradley Strahan

Rattlesnake Fern, Botrypus virginianus

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The Cormorant

for Eunice

Up through the buttercup meadow the children lead

their father. Behind them, gloom

of spruce and fir, thicket through which they pried

into the golden ruckus of the field, toward home:

this rented house where I wait for their return

and believe the scene eternal. They have been out

studying the economy of the sea. The trudged to earn

sand-dollars, crab claws, whelk shells, the huge debt

repaid in smithereens along the shore:

ocean, old blowhard, wheezing in the give

and take, gulls grieving the shattered store.

It is your death I can’t believe,

last night, inland, away from us, beyond

these drawling compensations for the moon.

If there’s an exchange for you, some kind of bond,

it’s past negotiation. You died alone.

Across my desk wash memories of ways

I’ve tried to hold you: that poem of years ago

starring you in your mater dolorosa phase;

or my Sunday picnic sketch in which the show

is stolen by your poised, patrician foot

above whose nakedness the party floats.

No one can hold you now. The point is moot.

I see you standing, marshalling your boats

of gravy, chutney, cranberry, at your vast

harboring Thanksgiving table, fork held aloft

while you survey the victualling of your coast.

We children surged around you, and you laughed.

Downstairs the screen door slams, and slams me back

into the present, which you do not share.

Our children tumble in, they shake the pack

of sea-treasures out on table, floor, and chair.

But now we tune our clamor to your quiet.

The deacon spruces keep the darkest note

though hawkweed tease us with it saffron riot.

There are some wrecks from which no loose planks float,

nothing the sea gives back. I walked alone

on the beach this morning, watching a cormorant

skid, thudding, into water. It dove down

into that shuddering darkness where we can’t

breathe. Impossibly long. Nothing to see.

Nothing but troughs and swells

over and over hollowing out the sea.

And, beyond the cove, the channel bells.

Rosanna Warren

In the Afterword to Small Planet, Robert Pack writes, “When the primary models for beauty and creativeness no longer are grounded in nature, we will already have evolved into another kind of species. . . . Without the sense of beauty that derives from an awareness of others, from the realization that we are merely creatures in an evolving world that we share with other creatures, a prior world on which our fabricated cultural world depends, the capacity for taking delight in our surroundings will wither away. Even before the planet becomes inhospitable to the human species, we will have died in spirit.”

One thing we inevitably share with every other creature is our mortality. Turning our backs and refusing to see death, or chasing promises to extend our lives at all costs, are simply among the many ways that we also choose to ignore and overlook life. Lichen stone and bee, ghost cattail and cormorant, I will sit down at your wake and invite you to mine. Until that day, let us live together. – Bill Griffin

Sensitive Fern, Onoclea sensibilis

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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:

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. . . 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

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