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Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Saul Griffin’

Long Enough

Posted in Ecopoetry, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 7, 2025| 6 Comments »

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[with 4 poems by Emilie Lygren]
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Ritual
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In each new place I look at the leaves.
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Some are gray and withered, others gold or green.
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The round spots of fungi, insect holes, split lines along veins all say:
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I have been here long enough for here to change me.
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May I stay half as long.
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❦
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You Find Hope When
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You find hope when you remember that
your best friend was elected Prom Queen.
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We were shocked.
She was not popular or plastic or a cheerleader,
like prom queens in the movies always were.
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She was kind to everyone.
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When things feel bleak, remember the people out there
who thought that mattered.
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Emilie Lygren
from What We Were Born For, Blue Light Press / 1st World Publishing, Fairfield IA; © 2021
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Something here beside the river is dragging. Something is slowing me down, clenching me inside, holding my skull between two fists. What is this cud of anger I’m chewing, chewing? I tug it loose when it snags on last summer’s dry aster or catches on a shard of quartz. I refuse to let go because it’s mine and I deserve to have it.
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As I walk its banks, the river notices that I have stopped noticing it but the river doesn’t comment. The river refuses to tell me whether I’m good enough or why I’m not. I can’t convince it to admit that it’s really all those others hurting me and not me hurting them. The river has plenty to carry without taking on another load of trash. Stuff, big and little, just wants to tag along with the river. Silt enjoys the life of swirls and eddies, leaves love to dance. Stones tune up and provide the music. The river invites their company and moves along.
 . .
Is time passing here? The movement of water, always movement, and yet there is always always more water. Time must have passed, because I find I have misplaced whatever it was that was dragging me, I mean, whatever I was dragging. The music hasn’t stopped and there is singing. Suddenly I notice that what I really want is to join the river. And I find I have.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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River, competence
 . .
Rocks once ripped
from mountainsides,
broken branches of trees,
leaf or tuft of grass.
 . .
Swept up by
constant working currents,
blue undersides of streams,
mud unstuck from banks,
wed to clear movement.
 . .
Ripple pool and wave
reduce rough edges into roundness,
sand sticks into gleaming bare swords,
hold stones until their shapes converge.
 . .
Stay here long enough
and the parts of you, too,
that have been broken
will be made smooth
 . .
Emilie Lygren
from What We Were Born For, Blue Light Press / 1st World Publishing, Fairfield IA; © 2021
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Emilie Lygren’s poems are not all quiet. Some rage against tyrants. Some spit and hiss at what the ocean spits up, the trash we have crammed down its throat. Some push back hard against cruelty and prejudice, anything that willfully splits and cleaves.
 . .
But all of Emilie Lygren’s poems quiet me. When I am disgusted by things people do and say and think; when it hurts me that the people I love are hurting and are hurting me; when I despair that we human beings will never learn kindness; when I can’t see any hope for our future as a species or for all the species we destroy –
 . .
When all this noise and rage and torment shake me like a maple leaf, then Emilie Lygren’s poems return with their voice of understanding. We all feel these things. We all need something better. Listen, just listen. The earth is still here for you. Join it, the earth and all it embraces. Find its place in you and rediscover your place on the earth. Every day, if only for a moment – quiet.
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❦
 . .
Emilie Lygren is a poet and outdoor educator in California. What We Were Born For is the winner of the 2021 Blue Light Book Award from Blue Light Press / 1st World Publishing and can be purchased at Bookshop.org.
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Read an additional poem by Emilie Lygren, Erosion, HERE:
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❦
 . .
All of today’s photos are by Jonathan Saul Griffin, © 2022
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❦ ❦ ❦
 . .
Meditation
 . .
Sitting near the window.
I watched a fly stammering
against the glass,
trying to break free
and transcend the
transparent boundary
it could not comprehend.
 . .
As I cupped my hands around the fly
then let it out the open door,
I wished that we could trade places –
 . .
that someone would gently remove me
from the invisible walls
I have pressed myself up against,
offer an opening I am too small to see.
 . .
After sitting longer,
I start to think that maybe I am all parts of the story –
 . .
the trembling fly,
the gently cupped hands,
the clear glass window,
the necessary air outside.
 . .
Emilie Lygren
from What We Were Born For, Blue Light Press / 1st World Publishing, Fairfield IA; © 2021
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❦ ❦ ❦
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