[poems by Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Rose Fyleman, David Radavich]
an offering from Craig Kittner . . .
Piute Creek
– Gary Snyder –
One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.
“Piute Creek” by Gary Snyder from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. Copyright © 2009 by Gary Snyder
. . . . . . .
an offering from Alana Dagenhart . . .
The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836
Poet, will you put the parts back together? The seed, the roots, the petals that have been thrashed and trampled? The bits that once meshed and fit now distracted and ignored? The air we can’t taste, the sunlight we can’t breathe, the stone beneath our feet, the water in our hair? Who will put us back together and put us into the places where we belong, all together?
Several friends have offered poems that speak to them about our Earth and which offer to gather us all in together to celebrate Earth Day! I’m posting their offerings April 21, 22, and 23. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you notice? What do you feel?
. . . . . . .
an offering from both Lynda Rush-Myers and Kitsey Burns Harrison . . .
The Peace of Wild Things
– Wendell Berry –
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems (North Point Press), © 1985
. . . . . . .
an offering from Kitsey Burns Harrison . . .
Mice
– Rose Fyleman –
I think mice
are rather nice;
Their tails are long,
their faces small;
They haven’t any
chins at all.
Their ears are pink,
their teeth are white,
They run about
the house at night;
They nibble things
they shouldn’t touch,
and, no one seems
to like them much,
but, I think mice
are rather nice.
“Mice” by Rose Fyleman (1887-1957)
. . . . . . .
an offering from David Radavich, his poem . . .
Enough
Rare is better:
The price soars
when you lack
what you need.
A poem carries
everything
in your pocket
like a mind.
Love can be
stored in a cell
whose DNA
heartens life.
Music is soul
saving, the simplest
math and finding
one solution.
O earth that is
rare and good,
sing to the unclean
with your seas.
“Enough” by David Radavich, originally appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal
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[original artwork by Linda French Griffin (c) 2021]
V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 