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Earth Day Prelude – Four

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 21, 2024| 5 Comments »

 .
 . 
April 21, 2024
 . 
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
++++++ Song of Solomon 2:11-13
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
I Open the Window
 . 
What I wanted
wasn’t to let in the wetness.
That can be mopped.
 . 
Nor the cold.
There are blankets.
 . 
What I wanted was
the siren, the thunder, the neighbor,
the fireworks, the dog’s bark.
 . 
Which of them didn’t matter?
 . 
Yes, this world is perfect,
all things as they are.
 . 
But I wanted
not to be
the one sleeping soundly, on a soft pillow,
clean sheets untroubled,
dreaming there still might be time,
 . 
while this everywhere crying
 . 
Jane Hirshfield
from The Asking, Penguin/Random House, © 2023
 . 
Shared by Debra Kaufman, Mebane, NC, who writes:
 . 
I love the subtlety in every poem by Jane Hirsfield. In her new, profound collection, The Asking, every poem is a kind of inquiry that allows readers to join her in generously observing the world and all its beings. She is never assuming, she investigates even the smallest of gestures or creatures, to stay open each day to possibilities, while still acknowledging the darkness.
 . 
++++++ Debra
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
. . . the road is found in the persistent walking of it . . .
++++++ Jane Hirshfield
 . 
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.  May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
++++++ Edward Abbey
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Fall Changes
 . 
I left those three crows
the last corn in my garden,
and not one thanked me.
 . 
++++++ *
 . 
Bright August sunlight
but just north of the woodpile
a November wind.
 . 
++++++ *
 . 
September begins
with a vee of geese flying
and two fat, slow frogs.
 . 
++++++ *
 . 
All night fallen leaves
pile up under the maples—
old thoughts, cast away.
 . 
++++++ *
 . 
A ragged black glove
high in the oak’s bare branches
flies away, cawing.
 . 
++++++ *
 . 
Through the leafless hedge
a neighbor I’ve never met
waves from her window.
 . 
Patricia Hooper
from Wild Persistence, University of Tampa Press, © 2019
 . 
Shared by David Radavich, Charlotte NC, who writes:
 . 
I greatly admire, Patricia Hooper; Fall Changes is from her book Wild Persistence.  I love the quiet interactions in this poem between the human and the non-human natural worlds – so comfortable and easy, so assumed.  The haiku portraits are subtly varied yet intimately linked, and the mere contemplation of trees and birds and frogs leads the witnesses to greet each other in friendly neighborliness even though they are strangers.  This is a gentle masterpiece of evocative scene-painting.
 . 
 The other poem is called New Emigrants from my book  The Countries We Live In (Main Street Rag, 2012).  This is a more incisive critique of climate change and human greed.
 . 
++++++ David
 . 
❦
 . 
New Emigrants
 . 
These maples have lived
here all their lives,
 . 
turned colors by the season,
offered shade, been
neighborly
 . 
on the edge of the city.
 . 
Who would have thought,
after all this time,
 . 
air could become
the enemy?
 . 
Earth has allied itself
with terrorists
 . 
who decry
the wickedness of weeds.
 . 
Water streams in
under cover of drought,
 . 
fire climbs
out with its fierce
fingers.
 . 
Now some are asking
whether it might be better
for the old limbs
 . 
to give place
to homes and people
and their saving chemicals.
 . 
Already I see wise ones
taking their leaves
north to where ice melts
into soft angels.
 . 
David Radavich, Charlotte, NC
from The Countries We Live In, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte NC © 2012
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:  for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes.
++++++ e.e.cummings
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Voices of the Air
 . 
But then there comes that moment rare
When, for no cause that I can find,
The little voices of the air
Sound above all the sea and wind.
 . 
The sea and wind do then obey
And sighing, sighing double notes
Of double basses, content to play
A droning chord for the little throats—
 . 
The little throats that sing and rise
Up into the light with lovely ease
And a kind of magical, sweet surprise
To hear and know themselves for these—
 . 
For these little voices: the bee, the fly,
The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks,
The breeze on the grass-tops bending by,
The shrill quick sound that the insect makes.
 . 
Katherine Mansfield
from Poems, London: Constable, © 1923 and New York: Alfred A. Knopf, © 1924
 . 
Shared by Tina Baumis, Goose Creek, SC, who writes:
 . 
Ms. Mansfield enlarged the smallest of movements and voices in a Georgia O’Keefe style, drawing us into the captivating moments she observed when drowning out the sea and wind.  We too, can relate to the drone of the bigger sounds in our day to day lives and rediscover wonder, peace, and joy of nature when we allow ourselves time to immerse into nature’s voices. “The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks, The breeze on the grass-tops bending by,” are lines that speak to me.
 . 
I took a walk in the woods
and came out taller than the trees.++++++ Henry David Thoreau
 . 
This quotation elevates your spirits inspiring you to go outdoors to appreciate the magic we often overlook during our full days. Recharge. Serenity. 
 . 
The California Urban Forest Council holds an annual haiku themed contest.  I was fortunate to have my haiku listed on their Facebook pages. On February 17th, 2024, my haiku was posted. An attempt to evoke feelings as Mr. Thoreau’s quote.
++++++ Tina
 . 
positivity
gather under canopy
mood swings lift with breeze
 . 
Christina (Tina) Baumis
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
We cannot be truly ourselves in any adequate manner without all our companion beings throughout the earth.
++++++ Thomas Berry
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Finally, the southwestern US is home to several species of scolecophidian blindsnakes in the genera Rena and Leptotyphlops. These are tiny and have undifferentiated body scales, meaning that all scale rows around the entire body (including the underside) are the same width. They are iridescent and extremely difficult to count, which has given rise to one of my all-time favorite quotes from a scientific paper: “We castigate the ancient lineage that begat Liotyphlops, for it is obviously the worst designed snake from which to obtain systematic data” (Dixon & Kofron 1983). 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
To celebrate EARTH DAY 2024 we are featuring seven posts of poems submitted by readers – poems by William Blake to Walt Whitman, Robinson Jeffers to A.R.Ammons to Linda Pastan, and by a number of contemporary poets. Check in every day or two – connect to the earth and to each other!
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❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
2018-02-09 Doughton Park Tree . 

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Earth Day Prelude – Three

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2024| 5 Comments »

 . 
April 19, 2024
 . 
…the path to heaven 
doesn’t lie down in flat miles. 
It’s in the imagination 
with which you perceive 
this world 
and the gestures 
with which you honor it.
++++++ Mary Oliver
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Insects with Long Childhoods
 . 
June bug, stag beetle, cicada –
three, seven, thirteen years as larvae
 . 
feasting underground in the gentle
rot of roots and castoffs, gone generations,
 . 
only a few weeks in the light
sharp as the blades of consciousness, incessant
 . 
buzz, cosmic background of loss
threaded through late summer’s throbbing
 . 
days, lush nights, a brevity so full
it must feel like th eternity they came from.
 . 
I have a child who asks a question
of the air’s every hum. He has not learned grief.
 . 
Sky, he says, and shovels soil into his mouth,
let’s it drip out mud.
 . 
Hannah Fries
from ECOTHEO Review, 3/2024
 . 
Shared by Lynda Rush Myers, Durham NC, who writes:
 . 
The poet, Hannah Fries, reminds me of Pattiann Rogers: scientific, technical, yet capturing the dense brevity of her subjects’ lives. The turn of the poem came as a touching surprise.  Every parent can relate.  A child’s word and actions capture his reality. The mother enjoys the unforgettable moment, knowing her son will learn grief all too soon.
 .
++++++ Lynda
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
There is only one subject:  what it feels like to be alive.  Nothing is irrelevant.  Nothing is typical.
++++++ Richard Rodriquez, in American Scholar, Spring 2002
 . 
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. 
++++++ Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Fly
 . 
Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush’d away.
 . 
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
 . 
For I dance,
And drink, & sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
 . 
If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,
 . 
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live
Or if I die.
 . 
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
from Songs of Experience; in the public domain.
 . 
Shared by Paul Karnowski, Asheville NC, who writes:
 . 
I like the connection Blake makes between the narrator and the “trivial” fly.  Humans too easily dismiss the rest of the natural world because we have the ability to “think.”  But it’s the countless thoughtless acts of blind hands – from other humans – that bring about our demise. Life and death connects us all – from the greatest thinker to the lowliest fly. 
 . 
++++++ Paul
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Am I leading the life that my soul, / Mortal or not, wants me to lead is a question / That seems at least as meaningful as the question / Am I leading the life I want to live.
++++++ Carl Dennis, A Chance for the Soul from Practical Gods
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
If I Fell
 . 
Crow knows me.
Can see the difference
between me and another.
 . 
Gave me a feather
I keep
in case I need to fly.
 . 
I know Crow
from Blackbird
and Raven
yet wonder
what Crow
would want
to keep
from me.
 . 
Perhaps a token
of my essence
 . 
in case Crow needs
to dream of flying.
 . 
David Dixon
Poetry In Plain Sight 2024, NC Poetry Society
 . 
Shared by Jenny Bates, Germanton, NC, who writes:
 . 
Life is a process of waking up from a long and ancient sleep of the soul. David Dixon embodies this whether he means to or not in his poetry. This poem I chose to send, If I Fell, has also been chosen for 2024 Poetry in Plain Sight through the NC Poetry Society.
As far as my own poem, it is a plea, a prayer that each of us has to fill up the emptiness inside us in different ways…even the Earth. My poem, Conceived and Born is from my Pushcart nominated book, ESSENTIAL.
 . 
++++++ Jenny
 .
❦
 .
Conceived and Born
 .
There’s no suckling here
 .
as though we were
 .
going to get some anyway
 .
The sanctity of Earth is a fast.
 .
The holy presence of prayer a fast.
 .
We are born of a mother that is not
dependent on us.
 .
She is a planet — and a small, fragile
one at that.
 .
Jenny Bates, Germanton NC
from Essential, Redhawk Publications © 2023
 .
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 .
And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.
++++++ William Shakespeare, As You Like It
 .
❦ ❦ ❦
 .
To celebrate EARTH DAY 2024 we are featuring seven posts of poems submitted by readers – poems by William Blake to Walt Whitman, Robinson Jeffers to A.R.Ammons to Linda Pastan, and by a number of contemporary poets. Check in every day or two – connect to the earth and to each other!
 .
❦ ❦ ❦
 .
 . 
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Signature

Posted in ecology, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on April 12, 2024| 5 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems from Visions International]
 . 
The Tending
 . 
Each day made a play for eternity then,
just as now each day shrinks
to a blurry moment’s recall. But still
there is the flat porch roof where a child
would lie down to watch
the clouds slowly changing shape,
 . 
or the blue, unfathomable sky
opening over, and puzzle where he was
before birth, before conception,
or if the world of sensation
had wiped his angel memory.
Cypress-tree shadow reached, as they
 . 
still do, across the lawn at evening,
and again I twist backwards
through a wooden sash window
into the long unoccupied bedroom
of my parents. Old clothes,
a straw-hat clinging to a wall, a stopped
 . 
alarm clock on the mantel.
And here, a navy-striped bolster,
the dent left by their sleeping heads
imagined as touchable still,
the love between us arguing against loss,
the tending they brought
 . 
to each sadness and terror of thought,
but more to an obvious wound –
the skinned knee dabbed
with Dettol; a beaker of oatmeal tipped
into a cold bath as a salve
for sunburn; a sewing needle squeezed
 . 
from a pin cushion bristling
with needles, the small hand held
forward into light, the gentle, tortuous
teasing out of a thistle thorn
and this placed – a charm,
frail tiny, golden – on the child’ palm
 . 
Patrick Deeley – Dublin, Ireland
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Foamflower
 . 
The last day of March – at the edge of the woods red maple, always impatient, always profligate, spreads its arms to offer a jillion winged seeds, the fire at its twigtips cooled to pale smolder. Deeper beneath the canopy leafbuds are swelling on oak and hickory, tangible pressured suspense, not yet quite to bursting. Ephemerals race to make sugar from thin sunlight before the overstory closes and their beds grow dark. Trout lily and hepatica already bloomed out; bloodroot roaring full throat; rue anemone flinging itself in galaxies up the ridge.
 . 
And what’s this? Foamflower has poked its first slender finger up between last year’s coppered leaves. A pale nubbin, a lifting spike, two or three then tomorrow a full maypole of tiny florets to comprise the rising inflorescence. Tiarella cordifolia, little crowns with heart-shaped leaves. What is its occupation in this temperate glade? What does it promise me other than its beauty?
 . 
Has it promised me anything? Should it? Perhaps I can tell you a story about the company foamflower keeps in this beech-dominated neighborhood: pussytoes, star chickweed, the throng of early blooming companions. Perhaps I’ll kneel to discover its native bee pollinators or wonder how its minute seeds disperse themselves. I might even recognize these felsic outcroppings and recall its family name, Saxifrage, Stone-breaker. But Lord of creation, save me from asking, “What good is it to me?” Expect a poultice of its leaves to heal my burns and scalds? Brew a tea to soothe my mouth and brighten my eye? Shall I read in its signature only whatever good use I can make of it?
 . 
On the seventh day the Lord looked out upon everything created and declared, “It is good!” And then rested. Never let me rest until I have looked around me, all around, water and stone, flower and tree, worm and beetle, turtle and bird, each of them good, in themselves and of themselves. Each one living usefulness that comprises its own being. What is my occupation in this temperate glade? What may I promise all these that surround me? To be a good companion in the community of all.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
O Doves
(Lima, Peru, 6 am)
and he saw the Spirit of God descent like a dove . . . Matthew 3:16
 . 
Shy ones, the shades of buttermilk
and cirrus cloud,
 . 
forgive the man and woman
cursing the scrabble of your bones on the
bedroom window ledge.
 . 
They are harried creatures
waking out of sleep’s egg
to the greasy clot of day.
 . 
They know only hunger,
which is the world’s stark treason,
 . 
and the mockery of iridescent necks
pecking the gray flagstones for crumbs.
 . 
How can they love the immaculate
cooing of your beaks so high in the blue air,
 . 
having forgotten the signs
of invisible things?
 . 
Maria Rouphail – Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
the gilded angel on the spire / draws the sun to its dewy face
 . 
landscapes advance / and dig their hooks in the elongated shadow/ you drag behind you
 . 
a child’s sleep soothed by rain’s ticking / on the other side of the earth
 . 
an accordion of hands fixing my hair
 . 
I smooth my quilt, where her dress scraps are stitched
 . 
a pair of wired gold rim glasses / like John Lennon’s
 . 
the water above the springs squeaks like pebbles
 . 
Here is the plain brown envelope with the hand-printed address and the Pete Seeger postal stamp. I slip out the slender booklet, cardstock cover illustrated by Malaika Favorite. Inside a listing of poems and their poets – Bulgaria, North Carolina, Wales, Macedonia, Texas, Ireland. And then the saddle-stapled pages, their lines wandering in the familiar, distinctive font, and the words . . . language . . . images.
 . 
After reading many issues of Visions International over many years, I still wonder how editor Bradley Strahan draws these voices to him. How he creates this international community of human soul. I wonder how he accomplishes it, but I may be learning a bit of what he is listening for, what he seeks and chooses as he compiles each collection. Even more compelling than the stories the poems tell are their images: elemental, bedrock, true. I read phrases that ring with harmonies I’ve never quite heard before and yet they strike as perfectly right and correct. The language is new and yet it enters me and becomes me. (And I have to confess, there is just something about those Irish poets.)
 . 
Here are old neighbors, like Maria Rouphail from Raleigh and Jessie Carty from Huntersville, but here are my new old neighbors from every corner of the earth, all drawn together through their poems. Drop Bradley a line and join the community.
 . 
Visions International / 309 Lakeside Drive / Garner, NC 27529 – 4 issues = $25
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Drive
. . . roll down the window, and let the wind blow back your hair.
+++ – Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road
 . 
My first love and I would circle the Blue Ridge
listening to Thunder Road, caught in a spiral –
the song, the earth, and us – a springboard
for leaping. Ancient and settled,
those mountains, a silhouette absorbing music
from our high school parties at the VFW.
Moths and gnats reduced to a fever
clouding porchlights, while kissing was its own
stratosphere. Who needed to breathe anyway?
Not when you’re a new mythology
sharing sixpacks of beer and meadows jacked
in the sweet everlasting – a wildflower
native to the state from which we’d grown.
We kept the geographies of each other’s
bodies beneath our tongues, but the sky
was an impossible parallel. Never mind that
we craved nothing linear. He and I, divergent lines,
a palm reader would have said about the future,
lanterning us in, cloud-swept from the open road.
W didn’t we marry at eighteen, honeymoon
nearby at the Peaks of Otter like all the other
teenage brides? You never asked me if I wanted to
stop. The truth is, I didn’t. I needed to witness
the horizon unobstructed by mountains
where trees shook colors from their crowns,
their roots tangled in bedrock. It was
something of a dance, the way our feet flew
over tar and gravel, spun around blind turns.
The valley that had fevered and pushed us out,
lay spent and sprawled beneath the open windows.
Those nights we rumbled through, we left nothing
but music growing fainter until it was gone.
 . 
Laura Ross – Mount Dora, Florida, USA
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
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