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Posts Tagged ‘Fred Chappell’

Forever Mountain

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 23, 2026| 4 Comments »

[I originally posted this essay, including Fred Chappell’s poem Forever Mountain, on October 28, 2012. Today, October 23, 2026, I am attending the Tremont Writers’ Conference in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Enjoy these musings from the archives and check in next Friday for a new post. — Bill]

❀    ❀   ❀

Keep close to Nature’s heart, yourself;
and break clear away once in a while,
and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean.
John Muir

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.     .     .     .    .

Why have they come?  Why have they driven hundreds of miles of highway and another twenty of Forest Service gravel to this Deep Gap?  Why have they tracked down my friend Mike Barnett and persuaded him to share with them everything they will need to know to spend a few nights on the trail? Why forsake comfort for mist, rain, steep switchbacks, cold nights, hard ground?  Why have they come here?

Now they huddle at the trail head – Judy, Nora, Cathy, Gloria, Joan, Nancy – median age 65 (just a wild guess, Ladies!).  They pull on fleece and rain gear because we’re already above 3,000 feet and it’s mid-October.  Mist condenses on the leaves and drips like rain.  The plan is to hike the AT for three days with everything we need to survive on our backs: food, stove, water & filter, tent, mummy bags, and lots of layers for nights just above freezing.  We’ll reward ourselves the third night with a short side hike to Albert Mountain and hope to catch the sunset and sunrise from the 5,280 foot summit and fire tower.

That sunrise seems a long way off as we hunker down for the first night half-way up Standing Indian Mountain.  It’s pitch dark , a “hunter moon,” first new moon after equinox, but what does absent moon matter when we are engulfed in cloud with thunder echoing ridge to ridge as lightning strikes the summit?  Kids, I just want to let you know that your grandmothers are some tough-ass mountain women – they wake up the next morning joking that the howl of wind and rain had caused them to miss George Clooney’s surprise midnight visit.  And the only complaint I hear is when Joan comes back from digging a cat hole just as the mist lifts to reveal a nice rainproof privy not twenty yards from our camp site.

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Our second night we stop at Beech Gap, a saddle between peaks with a good spring and level tent sites.  The stars burn cold as diamond just above our shoulders; we are wearing every layer of clothing we’ve carried.  I ask, “Why?  Why did you go to so much trouble to put this trek together?”

Judy was the instigator.  She told Nora she wanted to hike at least one stretch of the Appalachian Trail before she died.  Nora replied, “Gee, I know someone who’s been taking kids on high adventure hikes in the mountains for twenty years, and his sister-in-law Carol is my good friend.”  Nora called Carol, Carol called Mike, and Mike said, “OK.”  (I still haven’t asked him why he said yes!)  Wheels began to turn.  It began to look like Judy’s promise to herself that she’d have something big to to tell her grandchildren would be fulfilled.

Nora invited others, and Mike’s wife Nancy makes six.  One had hiked with her family as a child and wanted to recapture that feeling.  One walked miles every day and wondered if she could handle the challenge of doing it uphill with a pack.  Another had become concerned about her stamina and embarked on a course to improve her fitness; now she wanted to kick it up a notch. One had never experienced mountain wilderness.  All of the women had come with a frank openness to experiencing something new.  Something challenging.

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There are plenty of obvious physical challenges to spending a night on a mountain.  Just deciding what you’re willing to carry vs. what you’re willing to live without can become a metaphysical exercise.  Then there’s the trail itself.  Where will I find water?  Will the spring be dry?  How many uphill miles before my buns turn to steel?  How much huffing and puffing before I have a heart attack?

Physical challenges are obvious, but they are illusory.  I may be thirsty now, but I will drink later.  When the trail is steep, I walk more slowly.  I stop and rest.  Tired and sore?  Leaves are falling that I may scrape together for a bower.  Strange noises in the night?  My companions are close by.

I’m guessing there are still more reasons we’ve come to these mountains that none of us have yet spoken.  I’m certain there are reasons we couldn’t even have named until after we took this walk together.  There are reasons we’ll discover only with days and weeks of contemplation to come.  A taste of wildness – remote, unforgiving, pristine, elemental.  An assurance of self – I made it, I persevered.  Connection, unvarnished and unabashed – each one of us making our small offering to the survival, and the joy, of the group.  And a much larger connection – wind, trees, slopes, stars . . .  we are part of this living realm and can’t exist without it.

Why have we come here?  That’s exactly what we’re still discovering.

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.     .     .     .     .

Final question: Why did Mike ask me if I’d like to come and lend a hand as general schlepper, filter pumper, water boiler, story teller?  Because he knew as soon as the word “mountains” left his lips I would be saying, “YES!”

.     .     .     .     .

Forever Mountain
Fred Chappell

for J.T.Chappell, 1912-1978

Now a lofty smoke has cleansed my vision.

I see my father has gone to climb
Lightly the Pisgah slope, taking the time
He’s got a world of, making spry headway
In the fresh green mornings, stretching out
Noontimes in the groves of beech and maple.
He has cut a walking stick of second-growth hickory
And through the amber afternoon he measures
Its shadow and his own shadow on a sunny rock.
Not marking the hour, but observing
The quality of light come over him.
He is alone, except what voices out of time
Swarm to his head like bees to the bee-tree crown,
The voices of former life as indistinct as heat.

By the clear trout pool he builds his fire at twilight,
And in the night a granary of stars
Rises in the water and spreads from edge to edge.
He sleeps, to dream the tossing dream
Of the horses of pine trees, their shoulders
Twisting like silk ribbon in the breeze.

He rises glad and early and goes his way,
Taking by plateaus the mountain that possesses him.

My vision blurs blue with distance,
I see no more.
Forever Mountain has become a cloud
That light turns gold, that wind dislimns.

This is continually a prayer.

.     .     .     .     .

from The Fred Chappell Reader, St. Martin’s Press, (c) 1987 by Fred Chappell

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.     .     .     .     .

A brief postscript: Mike has told me several times of his instructions to Nancy that his ashes are to be strewn from the top of Standing Indian Mountain.  By noon on our second day the mist had lifted, and we ate lunch at that summit with glorious views of the autumn-hued ridges extending to an infinite horizon.  Mike, I hope it’s years in our future, but I can’t think of a better spot to lend the flora a little potash and calcium for all eternity.

.      .     .     .     .

Our true home lies outside, deep in the wilderness of forest and mountain, river and desert and sea, the source of our being and the destiny of our great meandering blundering dreaming journey through time. Like Odysseus in his wanderings, we are homeward bound whether we know it or not.
Edward Abbey

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.     .     .     .     .

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Poetry and Earth – Always

Posted in Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2026| 5 Comments »

Native Southern Wildflower – Geranium maculatum

 . 
[ poems by Fred Chappell, Patricia Crittenden, Patricia Hooper, Richard Widerkehr,
Ann Deagon, Peter Makuck, David Manning ]
 . 
Forever Mountain
 . 
J.T.Chappell, 1912-1978
 . 
Now a lofty smoke has cleansed my vision.
 . 
I see my father has gone to climb
Lightly the Pisgah slope, taking the time
He’s got a world of, making spry headway
In the fresh green mornings, stretching out
Noontimes in the groves of beech and maple.
He has cut a walking stick of second-growth hickory
And through the amber afternoon he measures
Its shadow and his own shadow on a sunny rock.
Not marking the hour, but observing
The quality of light come over him.
He is alone, except what voices out of time
Swarm to his head like bees to the bee-tree crown,
The voices of former life as indistinct as heat.
By the clear trout pool he builds his fire at twilight,
And in the night a granary of stars
Rises in the water and spreads from edge to edge.
He sleeps, to dream the tossing dream
Of the horses of pine trees, their shoulders
Twisting like silk ribbon in the breeze.
 . 
He rises glad and early and goes his way,
Taking by plateaus the mountain that possesses him.
 . 
My vision blurs blue with distance,
I see no more.
Forever Mountain has become a cloud
That light turns gold, that wind dislimns.
 . 
This is continually a prayer.
 . 
Fred Chappell (1936-2024)
from Source, LSU Press (1985), and collected in The Fred Chappell Reader, St. Martin’s Press (1987)
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
This was the first contemporary poem I read as I returned to poetry in my forties. I have read it again and again since then, as well as most everything else Fred has written. This, along with the poem Hymn by A R Ammons, was also the inspiration for me to imagine I might take up the pen and write as well. Even more today than all those decades ago, I am captured by this vision of heaven, the afterlife, as a campfire at night with a granary of stars, rising trout, and a new mountain to climb each morning. May it be so.
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
We Set Out Together
 . 
My daughter and me,
up an old mountain road through the late autumn trees.
We’d agreed she’d climb to the peak on her own and, on her way back,
find me where I’d wait among bright colored leaves.
 . 
But the leaves are gone, fallen back to the earth.
We’ve come too late.
 . 
We pause near the last of the asters; that lets me keep up.
But soon I begin to tire.
As we pass the first bench, I’m still with her.
Then, before the second, I say, “You go on ahead,”
as we had agreed.
She walks up the mountain, as I rest on the downside,
glad not to be chasing life’s peaks anymore.
 . 
This is how it goes, isn’t it?
You carry your children until they can toddle.
But, when you finally could walk together, they’re too busy.
Now, as you grow old, they walk ahead
and you see them receding as they round the bend.
 . 
I reach the second bench alone and walk on
to an opening in the woods with a long view across a deep stream-cut hollow.
I stand and look.
The ravine is too deep to cross; can three decades be bridged?
Will she pass or has she gone so far ahead that I won’t see her?
Her footsteps die out, replaced by a faint breeze whispering among the dry leaves,
then the buzz of a bee on a few faded flowers,
then nothing.
 . 
I wait.
I wait some more.
I wait as long as hope can hold on and then a bit longer,
then I turn back to the second bench.
 . 
It’s all agreed; she will come back
and I will be here – for a while.
Life’s path is universal, but uniquely trod
rising briefly from earth, then disappearing whence it came.
Is it better to live and die, as the forest does, without foresight?
She thinks the future is long and she knows she will return.
But I know time is short and fickle – like the first hard frost.
Will she come back in time?
 . 
Patricia Crittenden
 . 
Thank you, Pat, for sharing this lovely poem. It weaves between observation and musing, between presence and anticipation, even between joy and grief, just like a mountain path weaves up the ridge and down again. We may say we are glad that we no longer have to chase life’s peaks, but then regret swells as we watch life’s treasure recede. There are so many endings here, and so many hopes that what we hold dear may not end altogether. May each of us discover that it is never too late.
— Bill
 . 

Autumn Sasssafras

 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Sightings
 . 
The world leafs out again, the willow first
and then the river birches near the road
we’re driving down, you in your car seat watching,
for hawks or smaller birds returning home.
Two years have passed since you could walk or stand
alone.  The winter-damaged fields are sown,
and there, along the ridge, unraveling,
spirals of song birds, drifts of dogwood trees,
restored to blossom, beauty that breaks the heart.
And you whose spinal cord could not be healed:
you’re lowering the window, looking up
at miles of wings, your face alive with joy.
 . 
Patricia Hooper
from her fifth book, A Necessary Persistence
selected by Richard Widerkehr
 . 
Hooper makes us feel connected to this “annual miracle” of April, as E. Dickinson called it.  Clear images, strong feeling—a grandson’s wonder, the speaker’s joy and gratitude—this poem is a gift to the reader.  (I wrote a review of A Necessary Persistence for Aquifer a few years ago.)
— Richard
 . 
✾
 . 
In The Forest, There Are Stars
 . 
Thick green-black branches can’t hide them,
whistling through cedar and fir trees.  You’ve seen
one star drop as if torn from the forest.
 . 
Here stars jostle each other, falling toward you—
you forget what you were and how you came here.
Maybe, by day on the road to islands,
 . 
can you remember the white edges
of rooftops, how the forest rose to meet you?
Here sword ferns jut from the hillsides.
 . 
High fern-like branches fan themselves downward,
and stars soak you with their cold radiance.
The stars that were small and cold
 . 
in the sky are still small and cold.  The branches
lift about them, hissing lightly.
 . 
Richard Widerkehr
from Missing The Owl (Shanti Arts Publications), first published in Sweet Tree Review and then reprinted in Adventures Northwest
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 .  . 
Augury
 . 
Tonight my father cupped his hands and blew
into their hollow sphere and brought to life
the long wild resonant cry
of country boyhood, owl-haunted evenings
and the dark modulations of distant hounds,
fluttered his fingers throbbing into memory
those sobbing whistles hunting down the rails
my childhood dreaming in the restless city.
 . 
And as my children wondered cupping their hands
to capture that primeval mimicry
of all that haunts and heightens our precarious sense
of living rooted in immemorial time,
I saw my father new, and shared his knowing
the secret of our give and take of breath:
live long enough to know that we are dying,
hand on with tenderness and dignity
our resonant art
the long learned call
of trumpeter man.
 . 
Ann Deagon (1930-2024)
collected in Word and Witness: 100 years of North Carolina Poetry, Carolina Academic Press, Durham NC (1999)
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
“The secret of our give and take of breath:” the mimicry of primeval haunts whispers that secret into our soul, that we share these short lives with every creature that snuffles, caws, and swims, with every waving tree and scented flower. What call, what whistle will we hear that can draw us back together into one circle?
 . 
In her bio, Ann Deagon once remarked that she didn’t begin writing until she was forty, “when that three-headed dog love death and poetry took me in its teeth and shook me.” She taught Classics at Guilford College and was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, among many other honors during her life.
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
My Son Draws an Apple Tree
 . 
I watch it grow
at the end of his dimpled hand
rooted in white paper.
 . 
The strokes are fast
and careless, as if the hand
has little time.
 . 
Quick black trunk,
a green crown and in the white
air all by itself
 . 
a red splotch,
an apple face with a frown
that is his
 . 
he gravely says
looking up at me — the stiffening
branch he falls from.
 . 
Peter Makuck (1940-1923)
from Long Lens, New & Selected Poems, © 2010 by Peter Makuck, Boa Editions, Ltd.; American Poets Continuum Series, No. 121
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
Some poems we return to only to discover that at each visit they bestow upon us a different benediction. Which simply makes sense, since we are a different person each time we read the lines. I am the tree bent and stiffening. I pray only this, that for those I love and for all the earth as well that not all innocence and purity may be lost. Thank you, Peter, for continuing to inspire.
— Bill
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
The Dance
 . 
I say yes to the tulip tree
dropping its cups of flowers,
golden and green
and to the derelict ailanthus
breaker of concrete sidewalks
and to the sumac with its cones of fire.
 . 
Yes to the white-tails that float
their magic, then vanish
far into the woods’ deep green
and to the mallard pair, duck and drake
that waddle up from Crabtree Creek
and to the earthworms
they clear from our driveway.
 . 
Yes to the turtle, the red slider
that spring calls from the creek
to wandering, the one I rescued
from a storm-drain and gave my blessing to.
And yes to that damn beaver
that cut down the giant beech
near the stream, my favorite tree
in the wetland, and to the trees
he left behind.
 . 
Yes to the night’s extravagance of stars,
to Vega’s frozen light, the lyre of the stars
and to the southern cross
and multitudes of strange lights
I cannot see, much less name, so far below
the horizon over Patagonia
all the way down to the pole.
 . 
And yes to the blessing of day and night,
mates following each other
and to the contentment each brings
in its own way, bright, then silent dark.
 . 
Because none of these I can keep.
They are not mine, and I cannot stop
the music in the middle of the dance.
 . 
So yes to this morning rain carrying
yesterday away.
 . 
David Treadway Manning (1928-2021)
from Sailing the Bright Stream: New & Selected Poems, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC (2020)
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
Thank you, Dave for years of friendship. For minds that open and expand, always. For a thousand true laughs, the bright and knowing ones and the wicked ones. For this poem, its music in which you and I will continue to live.
— Bill
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
Life is not so much a matter of discovering something new as it is a matter of rediscovering what has always been present.
— W. Ralph Ward, Jr.
 . 
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.
— Minnie Aumonier
 . 
Thank you for celebrating the month of April with International Earth Day (April 22) and National Poetry Month, and for continuing the celebration. And thank you, Readers, who have selected poems to share that connect us to our planet and each other. EVERY DAY is EARTH DAY!
And thanks always to camping buddy Mike Barnett, who keeps me supplied with the unending delights of quotations from the spirit of Nature.
 . 
❁
 . 
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
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
 . 
2016-10-17b Doughton Park Tree

2016-10-17 Doughton Park Tree

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Poetry and Earth – Prayer

Posted in Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , on April 15, 2026| Leave a Comment »

 . 
[ poems by Gary Snyder, Diana Dinverno, Terry Bornhorst Blackhawk, 
Gina M. Streaty, Elizabeth H. Lara, Fred Chappell ]
 . 
Prayer For The Great Family
 . 
Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day—
  and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet
      in our minds so be it
 . 
Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf
  and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind
  and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain
      in our minds so be it
 . 
Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent
  Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
  clear spirit breeze
      in our minds so be it
 . 
Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,
  freedoms, and ways, who share with us their milk;
  self-complete, brave, and aware
      in our minds so be it
 . 
Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
  holding or releasing; streaming through all
  our bodies salty seas
      in our minds so be it
 . 
Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
  trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
  bears and snakes sleep—he who wakes us—
      in our minds so be it
 . 
Gratitude to the Great Sky
  who holds billions of stars—and goes yet beyond that—
  beyond all powers, and thoughts
  and yet is within us—
  Grandfather Space.
  The Mind is his Wife.
 . 
      so be it.
 . 
Gary Snyder (after a Mohawk prayer)
from EARTH PRAYERS, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
✾
 . 
I am excited to see so many wood anemone blooming this April. A galaxy where I noticed only a few lonely stars last year. Joyful in the discovery, excited to share – let those feelings speak their name, Gratitude. And let gratitude grow into the love that inspires to me to hold all living things safe and sacred, this great family of life with which I share our planet.
— Bill
 . 
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁ ❀
 . 
We Visit the Tomales Point Trailhead 
as Congress Continues to Threaten the Sale of Federal Land 
 . 
My daughters and I park beneath a canopy of old trees,
a windbreak when this land was a working dairy ranch.
Beyond the once-whitewashed barn, bunkhouses,
and sheds, the trail leads us onto sand
winding through lemon-hued lupines
so tall they sway above our heads.
 . 
We ooh and aah at the vast exuberance—
California poppies, thistles with lush purple fringe,
and, after a gentle climb, we look west,
 catch sight
of the Pacific’s immense blue, its rippled light,
a spectacular cinematic sky. To the east,
gold and green meadows rise.
 . 
We walk across the peninsula’s clavicle,
its tender ridge dips into hollows,
monarchs flutter, tend to blooms.
 . 
I follow the lift of my girl’s arm
pointing to the summer-saturated hills.
Grazing tule elk, once thought extinct,
somehow still here, keep their distance,
raise their massive heads.
 . 
A Cooper’s Hawk circles the grassland.
Far below, birds we can’t identify glide
in formation just beyond the ocean’s reach.
Trills and whistles fill the scented air—
faintly honeysuckle, intoxicating, wild.
 . 
My younger daughter notices tiny orange petals—
scarlet pimpernel clings to the path’s edge, firmly rooted,
part of the shoreline’s crown.
 . 
As the land bends, we pause
high above a cove, a stretch of surf-ruffled beach
dotted with rock—scan for sea-lions, listen
for their barks before we move on—
the bluff too fragile to descend.
 . 
Diana Dinverno
 . 

[photo by Diana Dinverno]

 . 
✿
 . 
In the Spring of 2025, my daughters and I visited the Point Reyes National Shoreline and walked the Tomales Point Trail, owned and managed on our behalf by the U.S. government. It is one of the most wondrous and beauty-filled places I’ve seen. Leading up to the visit, we’d heard reports of proposals in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to sell 2-3 million acres of public lands—and authorize the sale of many more. It was heartbreaking to think this public place, available to anyone to explore, could be sold to the highest private bidder for its stunning ocean views. Due to immense public opposition, the provisions were removed from the bill, but in the face of continued pressure by some members of Congress and our current Administration’s quiet dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service, our National Parks, with their still-wild places, remain at risk. 
 . 
Although I’ve spent most of my life in the Midwest, I currently live in Texas, trying to learn the names of trees, flowers, and birds. 
— Diana
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁ ❀
 . 
Calling the Owl
Audubon Christmas Bird Count, 
Oakland County, MI, 1995
 . 
This time the owl eludes us
where we stand, trying to call him in
with his own voice
 . 
which we’ve captured on tape
to release to the predawn woods.
Press a button. The air flutters,
rushing from our black box
 . 
what is hidden from us—
 . 
wing-like quaverings—
 . 
soft bursts of song.
If light mutes him, shadows offer hope,
and we listen so intently into them
the snowy meadow
suddenly seems wider, brighter
with news from beyond its perimeter.
Don’t lift, I almost pray,
 . 
don’t disappear.
Day will break soon enough.
Let us hear your faint vibrato and absorb
what is invisible, wild and nearly gone.
Mist thickens the silence, promises
patience, echo, sound not sight.
I will let that fluty tremolo find,
fill me, give voice
to emptiness. I hold my breath to sustain
the long vowel of night.
 . 
Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk
first appeared in Yankee (Jean Burden, editor); collected in body & field (Michigan State U. Press, 1999) and the chapbook of bird poems,  The Whisk & Whir of Wings (Ridegway Press, 2015). Margaret Gibson included it in Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis (Grayson Books, 2021), an anthology she produced as CT Poet Laureate.
 . 
✿
 . 
This is one of my earlier poems, written from my love of birds and birding — a love that Jan Booth introduced to me early in our friendship which goes back over 55 years (!) to our days as first-year teachers in Detroit.
— Terry
 . 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁ ❀
 . 
M. Wright Fishing at Lake Jordan
(3/27/05)
 . 
I sit, wait,
watch him
cast his long line—
orange cork breaks water,
shatters oak trees. Mirror images
shift, shimmy, merge in symmetrical circles
in water, murky gray
like the slate-blue sky that slumps to meet it.
 . 
A red-tailed hawk sprawls on evening air,
hovers overhead, its wings slice
fast-approaching night.
A crappie, jerked to the surface,
fights against the line,
treads gelatinous green moss
with its silver head
before breaking free
I pray like Jonah.
Pray for two fish to feed the multitude.
 . 
To the evensong of crickets,
twilight weeps a misty rain
for me embraced by cold
as the man in gray dungarees
becomes his own shadow,
a tree like willow oaks coddling him,
head lowered, shoulders
descending with darkness.
 . 
As the pale green bucket
rings out emptiness,
minnows are turned loose.
A spring moon clings to sky,
reels me into myself…
 . 
Gina M. Streaty
 . 
✾
 . 
I drafted this poem several years ago during a fishing outing with a friend. He tried to catch fish; I sat at a picnic table penning poems for hours. Nature always quickens my spirit. I am more connected to the natural world than I am people. Truth. Nature with its vibrant colors, textures, scents, sounds/music, secrets, mysteries, motion, moods, and magic is spectacular. It captivates me. My bucket list lengthens with each new nature screensaver on my computer. We are blessed to have earth’s infinite exquisiteness and the innumerable ways nature inspires, consoles, protects, heals, sustains, and forgives us. How can God not be the creator? Earth is our Eden, a spectacular, invaluable gift to us. We certainly don’t deserve it, but earth deserves our protection, our love, and bare minimum, our respect.
 . 
My poet friend Lenard D. Moore told me about your call for Earth Day themed poems. He and I share an intense love for the natural world and poetry.
— Gina
 . 
 , 
❀ ✿ ✾ ❁ ❀
 . 
Part-Way Down the Mountain Path
 . 
Late morning, the air clings
despite the sheltering trees.
High-stepping over weeds
and scattered gravel, we come to
a hollow rotting log, so long fallen
the soil has packed itself
against one side, a sort of ledge,
and there, a hen with three chicks.
Mama hen hops onto the ledge,
pirouettes slowly on scaly yellow
legs to watch her chicks scramble
and bumble and hop and
slide back and get up again.
She clucks and struts, goes
back around to the low side
of the log, hops over once more,
waits while her chicks
try out the game. We watch
for a long time – over and over
she jumps / waits / circles back –
until chickafterchickafterchick
they follow her over that log.
 . 
Elizabeth H. Lara
Silver Springs, Maryland
 . 
✿
 . 
I wrote this very plain and simple poem while at our farm in the mountains of San Cristobal, Dominican Republic.
— Liz
 . 
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 . 
A Prayer for the Mountains
 . 
Let these peaks have happened
 . 
The hawk-haunted knobs and hollers,
The blind coves dense as meditation,
The white rock-face, the laurel hells,
The terraced pasture ridge
With its broom sedge combed back by wind:
Let these have taken place, let them be place.
 . 
And where Harmon Fork piles unrushing
Against its tabled stones, let the gray trout
Idle below, its dim plectrum a shadow
That marks the stone’s clear shadow.
 . 
In the slow glade where sunlight comes through
In circlets and moves from leaf to fallen leaf
Like a tribe of shining bees,
Let the milk-flecked fawn lie unseen, unseing.
 . 
Let me lie there too
And share the sleep
Of the cool ground’s mildest children.
 . 
Fred Chappell
from Spring Garden, © 1995 by Fred Chappell, Lousiana State University Press.
selected by Bill Griffin
 . 
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 . 
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
– Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
 . 
Thank you for celebrating the month of April with International Earth Day (April 22) and National Poetry Month. Readers have selected poems that connect us to our planet and each other. If you have a poem that has rooted you to the earth and spread your branches into bright sky, please share! It can be a poem by your favorite writer, living or dead, a poem of your own, or both. We will continue sharing Earth poems as long as you send them.
 . 
Send a your poem(s) in the body of the email or as .DOC or .RTF to:
ecopoetry@griffinpoetry.com 
 . 
Please include your comments or reaction to the poem. And publication acknowledgments if previously published.
 . 
Feel free to invite others to send their favorite Earth Day poems. Please refer them to this link for instructions: EARTH DAY EVERY DAY. Perhaps some day we will be able to say we live in the Age of Connection.
 . 
❁
 . 
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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2020-09-08b Doughton Park Tree
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