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Same and Different

Posted in Christian themes, Imagery, tagged imagery, Ludwigia, nature, nature photography, nature poetry, Philip Levine, poetry on August 29, 2025| 2 Comments »

[ with Breath by Phillip Levine]

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God within

God around

in all creation

God is found

We joined our voices to sing this tiny hymn by Randall Pratt to conclude this morning’s worship. Sing it once and the song is no more than a breath or two. Sing it through a second time, repeat, again. The simple refrain begins to open the singers, unexpected possibilities emerge, and an idea arises in these hearts gathered here – perhaps God desires to be found. Mystery of mysteries, revealed in simplicity. Together we repeat this tiny hymn ten times and it swells to become huge within us.

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God is stillness.

God is moving, moving, ever moving.

God is one beautiful truth discovered.

God is anxiety that so much yet remains unknown.

God cleaves together.

God cleaves apart.

God is always the same.

God is always changing.

There is nothing that is not God.

There is nowhere that is not God.

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Yesterday I walked a short trail not much frequented. In a few weeks I will guide a naturalist hike along this section and yesterday I wanted to make sure I knew everything. “Same and Different,” I’m thinking to title the gathering. So many autumn flowers are the same yellow; so many different forms and lives. And although I expected I would already be familiar with everything I would see as I walked yesterday, the universe, like God of course, is always new. No coincidence there. After squishing through a damp patch, knocked out by the riot of cardinal flower and the seethe and potential of unfurling ironweed, I was suddenly halted by something different.

Yellow. Its four petals arranged at right angles were soft, curled, but when I smoothed them I found little banners on short pedicels, like the cardboard fans we hand out in Southern churches on summer Sundays. At the center of each was a powder puff cluster of pistil/stamens. One notices such details when leaning in close to make friends, but even from down the trail some meters removed this odd little plant still whispered its distinctiveness. Different and the same. Surely I’ve seen you before! How many minutes shall I pause and contemplate?

Then of course being me I looked it up. The joy is in the encounter but also in discovering all the connections. Seedbox or Rattlebox this delicate bloom is called by human beings, with an almost comical genus name, Ludwigia. But this is how I know you now – humble cousin of primrose prepared to stand up to the flash of iron and authority of cardinals.

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Return to this Sunday morning. We’ve closed the service with song and hugged goodbye. As the others drive away from church, I walk down to the little pond at the back of the property. I’ve seen some yellow flowers there. Even before I reach them, clustering at water’s edge, I know they are the same and different. More like a shrub than a nature trail herb, leaves narrow little arrows, but here are four soft petals that want to curl under, here is the powder puff center. Ludwigia, every day you rise up to greet me and remind me there will always be more to discover. You certainly favor damp and muck. You certainly have yellow down pat. But before I delve into your taxonomy and dig up answers I’ve yet to even question, let me simply stand here a moment and appreciate. Stillness ever moving. The unchangeable that is always new. A certain melody that is still playing in my head belongs to you, too, little flower. Within, around, in all creation . . . found.

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Ludwigia alternifolia — Seedbox

Ludwigia decurrens — Wingleaf Primrose-Willow

Ludwigia alternifolia

Ludwigia decurrens

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Breath

Who hears the humming

of rocks at great height,

the long steady drone

of granite holding together,

the strumming of obsidian

to itself? I go among

the stones stooping

and pecking like a

sparrow, imagining

the glacier’s final push

resounding still. In

a freezing mountain

stream, my hand opens

scratched and raw and

flutters strangely,

more like an animal

or wild blossom in wind

than any part of me. Great

fields of stone

stretching away under

a slate sky, their single

flower the flower

of my right hand.

Last night

the fire died into itself

black stick by stick

and the dark came out

of my eyes flooding

everything. I

slept alone and dreamed

of you in an old house

back home among

your country people,

among the dead, not

any living one besides

yourself. I woke

scared by the gasping

of a wild one, scared

by my own breath, and

slowly calmed

remembering your weight

beside me all these

years, and here and

there an eye of stone

gleamed with the warm light

of an absent star.

Today

in this high clear room

of the world, I squat

to the life of rocks

jewelled in the stream

or whispering

like shards. What fears

are still held locked

in the veins till the last

fire, and who will calm

us then under a gold sky

that will be all of earth?

Two miles below on the burning

summer plains, you go

about your life one

more day. I give you

almond blossoms

for your hair, your hair

that will be white, I give

the world my worn-out breath

on an old tune, I give

it all I have

and take it back again.

Philip Levine

online at The Academy of American Poets

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Please explore my new page – FLORA – which meanders from spring into summer on the Elkin & Allegheny Nature Trail (a segment of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail).

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Some Heal Us

Posted in Christian themes, Ecopoetry, Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Christic, ethnobotany, Ilia Delio, nature, nature photography, poetry on June 20, 2025| 9 Comments »

Great Spangled Fritillary on Common Milkweed

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein.

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All these years, how have I overlooked this humble herb growing up through the pavement? Tough narrow leaves, bottle brush of tiny flowers climbing its central spike, an entire array of bottle brushes – Virginia Pepperweed. It’s in the Mustard family, Brassicaceae, so I can already imagine its spicy taste as I pinch off a leaf and raise it to my . . . but wait! Now I’m recalling the Fourth Question you must ask yourself when you forage in the wild: “Do dogs poop here?”

In a few minutes I’ll explain Questions One, Two, and Three to my hikers that are now gathering in the field beside the nature trail. Thus we’ll begin our first ever Ethnobotany hike as part of NC Trail Days in Elkin. I’ve titled the event, “Some Feed Us, Some Heal Us, Some Kill Us.” Doesn’t our culture of plants teach us exactly that? Or have we become so far removed from nature that we’ve forgotten how everything around us affects us, and how we affect everything around us? Culture is the wisdom and traditions we pass along from generation to generation; Ethnobotany studies cultural relationships to plants. These hikers have signed up to satisfy their curiosity and learn something new, but I expect we will all learn from each other. I’m sure someone’s granny once picked creasy greens in the Spring or stirred up a mess of poke salet.

Southern Chervil, Carrot/Parsnip family

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I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.

John Burroughs

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

John Muir

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The Elkin & Allegheny Nature Trail, a part of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, just three miles or so if you include all its side loops and detours, has become my textbook. I’ve walked here several times a week, all seasons and all weathers, until I know where to find the single Fairy Wand and the four Adam-&-Eve orchids. When the first Hepatica blooms and when the last Trout Lily has dropped its petals and set seed. And yet this trail is always new. Last week a just-fledged Pileated Woodpecker poked its head out of the hole we’d been watching for a month. This week American Hornbeam displays its little chandeliers of seeds, glistening with afternoon rain. There is always something to discover, something to become part of.

This little three mile trail has also become my refuge. Maybe I start down the trail with a dark cloud around my head and my breathing sounds like thunder, maybe there is only cold encircling my heart. Maybe the dark and the cold have not fully dissipated by the time I return to my car, but nevertheless some small seed of hopefulness always finds a way to take root. I recently encountered this saying: “Each one of us carries a sack of rocks. You don’t know how heavy your neighbor’s sack is. You’ve just got to carry your own rocks.” There is always a way to put one foot in front of the other. Slow or fast, heavy or light, grunting or singing, there is a way to walk on down the trail.

Hairy Skullcap, Mint family

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How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!

Henry David Thoreau, from his Journal, May 6, 1851

The healing potential of flowering plants is an integral part of the deep bond that exists between humans and nature. That flowers have the ability to heal us, not only physically but also emotionally and spiritually, is something that has been recognized and utilized as far back as we know.

Anne McIntyre, from Flower Power

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Last week granddaughter Amelia and I played Scavenger Hunt. We took turns drawing little pictures of things in the yard and having the other one find them. My Dandelion and Holly she spotted right off. The Pill Bug she recognized but took longer to find. Just a half hour outdoors on a muggy day, but it erased a good fraction of my load of dread and loathing. She and I connected with each other in those connections with nature. As Einstein suggested, our task is to somehow discover that we are not separate from the universe, to widen our circle of compassion. As people come together on my little nature hikes, fifteen or twenty crouching in fields and woods eight or ten times a year, do we accomplish that? Do we connect?

The First Question you must ask yourself before you pick a leaf or a flower is, “Am I 100% certain of my identification?” You wouldn’t want to brew up a tea of Pukeweed (Lobelia inflata). Wild Carrot is closely related and looks quite similar to the most toxic plant in North America, Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum), both of them introduced from Europe and prevalent in our area. On the other hand, if I can recognize every member of the Rose family, Rosaceae, from apple to quince to almond, I can be pretty confident they are all edible.

The Second Question is, “If I pick this, how will that affect the local ecology?” I tell folks they wouldn’t want to eat the last wild huckleberry if a hungry bear was standing beside them, but the full complexity of the web of life is impossible to grasp. Pollinators and larval hosts, things that creep beneath the leaf litter and fly down from the Red Oak’s crown, how does each feed and heal the next? My friend April supplemented her meager nutrition while she through-hiked the Appalachian trail by chewing greenbrier, cooking up pots of stinging nettle, cracking hickory nuts. She had a personal rule – never dig up a Cucumber Root if it was busy making a flower or a berry. It’s hard to imagine now, but a hundred years ago Galax was almost extirpated from the southern mountains as people gathered it to ship north for Christmas decorations. May we widen our circle of compassion to discover we, too, are part of these woods, these fields.

And the Third Question is really just a subset of the Second: “If I pick this plant, how will it affect the experience of those who come after me?” Aren’t most major world philosophies and religions based on some paraphrase of this? The Golden Rule; the Second Commandment. It would seem obvious that in the shared space of a public park you wouldn’t dig up the flowers. Is it possible for us large-brained primates to widen our consciousness until we can image the entire earth as shared space?

So let’s take a walk in the woods. Let’s imagine how our grandparents would have experienced and related to the life here. Let’s learn from these plants about other cultures, the Cherokee, the European pioneers. Let’s discover our own connections, to the diversity around us and to each other. Let’s be fed, and let’s be healed. Let us be part of the universe.

Smooth Solomon’s Seal, Asparagus family

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The Christic

I am looking at a tree, but I see such astounding beauty and

graciousness, the tree must be You, O God,

I look at the wild weeds playing across the fields, and their

wild joyful freedom speaks to me of You, O God.

Yesterday, I saw a child crying alone on a busy corner, and

the tears were real, and I thought, you must be crying, O God.

God, you are the mystery within every leaf and grain of sand,

in every face, young and old, you are the light and beauty

of every person.

You are Love itself.

Will we ever learn our true meaning, our true identity?

Will we ever really know that we humans are created for

love?

For it is love alone that moves the sun and stars

and everything in between.

We are trying too hard to find You, but You are already here,

We are seeking life without You, but You are already within,

Our heads are in the sand, our eyes are blinded by darkness,

our minds are disoriented in our desperate search

for meaning.

Because you are not what we think You are:

You are mystery.

You are here and You are not,

You are me and You are not,

You are now and You are not,

You are what we will become.

You are the in-between mystery

The infinite potential of infinite love,

And it is not yet clear what You shall be,

For we shall become something new together.

Ilia Delio, OSF

Black Cohosh, Buttercup family

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If you’re passing through Surry County, North Carolina, visit our trails! Elkin Valley Trails Association builds and maintains Section 6 of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail as well as many connecting trails in the area. The Over Mountain Victory Trail (Revolutionary War era) and Yadkin River Trail both pass through Elkin.

EVTA also plans many trail activities and work days throughout the year, plus we partner with Explore Elkin to present NC Trail Days for four days at the beginning of June every year.

And if you would like a copy of the handout I prepared for “Some Feed Us, Some Heal Us, Some Kill Us,” click HERE. This is a small subset of the 250+ plant species we’ve discovered on the E&A Nature Trail. Walk the trail and help us add more!

Finally, you may notice that the title of our ethnobotany hike bears a resemblance to the title of the wonderful book by Hal Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, which I suppose you might call Ethnozoology. Dr. Herzog is a psychology professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC and a world leader in the field of anthrozoology. Thanks, Hal, for continuing inspiration!

And, for teaching me about sacks of rocks, warm thanks to Pat Riviere-Seel.

Woodland Hydrangea & Bumble Bee

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Black-snakeroot (Sanicle), Carrot/Parsnip Family

Virginia Pepperweed, Mustard family

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Spring. Whatever.

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Ecopoetry, haiku, imagery, Jacar Press, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, nature, nature photography, nature poetry, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on May 9, 2025| 2 Comments »

[with 3 poems by Kathryn Kirkpatrick]

Turbulence

Of the stomach lifting. Of the weightless

where I was and am again variety.

Sway and crack, our craft. Slalom

the wind. So much carbon in the currents.

Of the climate kind. Of the jerk and twack.

Of the hurtling toward. Shake right out

of our human. As if we might not

settle back into these bodies,

but land instead in someone else.

Yet the hare far below isn’t empty

to receive us. Neither is the horse.

They have their own embodied plans.

We will have to settle beside ourselves

Blurred boundaries and all. Bump,

rattle, and creak. Our enlightened selves

grasp cokes, play solitaire, read, sleep,

going on as if what’s happening isn’t.

With more than prayers

holding us up, we are nonetheless

tossed in the vastness.

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

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ah spring spring

how great is spring!

and so on

Bashō (1644-1694)

Basho has perfectly snared my mood this morning. I am reading Spring haiku at SeasonWords.com: Ah, Winter vanquished!, Ah, new life!, blah, blah, blah. I am not feeling newly lively these days, especially not as the sun so gaily rises. By day I seem to be the rock between two storms, my father and my son, but by 4 AM I have eroded to sand and the bed is far too gritty for sleep. Now this haiku blog offers a prompt for the season and encourages sharing? Here are my Spring lines:

what to say

when everyone’s “spring, spring” –

toads trilling

In her book Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All, Charlotte Digregorio states, Wherever one lives, one experiences changing seasons. The haiku’s brief flash illuminates one specific moment. We read the terse lines and might recognize where we are, but certainly, and more critically, we do know precisely when we are. Perhaps we have never shared the haiku’s circumscribed space, but we do share the time of pollen, the humidity, crisp crackling leaves, the shivers. A moment’s experience broadens into a communal truth.

In that sense, haiku becomes less an instruction in encountering nature and more an invitation to shared humanity. Besides the experience of changing seasons, the thing we all share is the experience of suffering. A moment’s observation may stand in as a piercing metaphor: Spring’s anticipation, Summer’s lassitude, Autumn’s anxiety, Winter’s dread. And perhaps pricked by that dart of connection upon reading a haiku, we might also share one more thing – joy.

Just to be fair, I imagine my Spring haiku is not really an indictment of inane people chattering around me. On a dark night after rain, the lonesome trill of an American toad rising from down in the woods is a peace offering. My son and I stood on the deck last night and heard it together. Yes, it was very dark. This morning, light has returned. Again. Oh my. The season rolls on.

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In 1685, the Japanese astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai adapted the 24 Solar Terms of the Chinese calendar for Japan and created 72 seasons. As we learn at SeasonWords.com, these 72 seasons “offer a poetic journey through the Japanese year in which the land awakens and blooms with life and activity before returning to slumber.” Mark, the site’s curator and naturalist, shares lessons from nature corresponding to the seasons; haiku both ancient and modern that complement the lesson; and craft tips / kigo with a prompt and an invitation. Readers share their haiku and receive commentary.

Visit https://seasonwords.com/ and subscribe to receive periodic postings in your mailbox!

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The Ridge

One day I found the outline of a deer

in the snow. She’d slept on the old logging road

above our home, curled against the cold.

Her imprint on a trail I’d walked for

twenty years was intricate and vulnerable

as I now feel since strangers bought this land.

their cameras

nailed to the trunks of trees

Christ

At first I waved. New to the neighborhood,

the seemed shy. Hovering at the side

of the road with their harnessed dogs, they walked

harnessed too, shoulders hunched, eyes averted.

About their money I didn’t then know, or

Appalachian families letting go of land.

orange flags

festoon the property lines

orioles in snow

What we had of commons among

hill people here is gone, our hollow hollowed

out, our waves, our lifted heads, our calls across

casual borders fretted now by registered

mail. “Not authorized.” “Legal action.” They’ve

no bonds to sunder because they’ve no bonds made.

camera 1

my shetland sheepdog framed

first day of spring

Surveyed for surveillance, the ridge. But I

can love what I don’t own. I miss the oaks,

their wide-girthed stillness. I miss the mountain’s

spine. Across family lands and state lines,

through Cherokee and Appalachian time,

the mountains stay. The mountains stay. They stay.

a taloned sun sets

the red-tailed hawk

needs no human hand

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

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Creatures – so we are. We seek what all creatures seek, but especially we seek the closeness of other creatures. Kathryn Kirkpatrick is visited by crows and grieves for house wrens dying and for cows separated from their calves. She reveals her creature’s struggle and confusion as she loses her mother. She is not afraid to say that she hesitates to speak of death because every creature must face death but fears to do so. She reveals moments and connections and we readers look about us to discover her light is casting our own shadow. And in the closing section of Creature, Kathryn Kirkpatrick has written the finest collection of dog poems I’ve read in twenty years.

Creature by Kathryn Kirkpatrick at Jacar Press: HERE.

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On Finding Monarch Caterpillars in September

And whatever love a parent

feels stealing bread for a starving

child, I have it as I dig by

the flimsy light of my bargain

headlamp, having driven miles for the last

of the chain-store milkweed, which will

feed these ravenous young in their striped

skins, who are no metaphor, who stand for

themselves only, though in my ecological

worry, my long-range fright, I am surely

standing for something as I shovel in the dark.

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

In their multi-generational migration pattern, the endangered monarch butterfly bears its fourth generation in September and October. Rather than dying after two to six weeks as the earlier generations do, this generation migrates to warmer climates like California and Mexico, living six to eight months before starting the process again. – K.K.