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[ poems by Robert Hass, Debra Kaufman, Hilda Downer,
Richard Wilbur, Paul Karnowski ]
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The Image
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The child brought blue clay from the creek
and the woman made two figures: a lady and a deer.
At that season deer came down from the mountain
and fed quietly in the redwood canyons.
The woman and the child regarded the figure of the lady,
the crude roundnesses, the grace, the coloring like shadow.
They were not sure where she came from,
except the child’s fetching and the woman’s hands
and the lead-blue clay of the creek
where the deer sometimes showed themselves at sundown.
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Robert Hass
selected by Debra Kaufman
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I love how this poem speaks to the creative spirit and how the basic elements of the earth inspire and sustain us. There is here a delicate, a reverent, interdependence. Had the creek and earth not made the clay, had the child not brought the clay to the woman, had the deer not visited the creek, had the poet not observed the wonder of it all, the spark that inspired the poet would not exist, and we would not have this poem. I admire the brevity and apparent simplicity of the poem, knowing that the poem, like the clay, had been worked over so that every line (as every curve of the figure) is a work of art. A gift. A wonder.
— Debra
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❀
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Off-White
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This Sunday the sky is an eerie
off-white, as if dawn began rising,
then stood still, reluctant to let
the day begin. And no wonder.
I read of collapsing buildings,
. .
people scurrying for shelter,
burning oil fields, smoke and ash
roiling toward heaven. But heaven
refuses our cruelty:
The clouds do not budge.
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I believe, we used to recite,
in the Holy Spirit, and although I could
only picture it as a tattered cloud,
I did believe, as easily as I believed
in God, in America, hand over heart.
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To believe made my small heart soar.
I’d skip home singing This Little Light of Mine.
I had a crush on Jesus, with his
soft brown eyes, who said, Be ye kind
and Suffer the children to come unto me.
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The clouds begin to shred. Any prayer
I might offer dissolves on my tongue.
My body says time to move.
Today, the second day of spring,
will be uncommonly hot.
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Debra Kaufman
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❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
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— Drill, Baby, Drill
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Drill because the rich get richer
and the rest get drilled.
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Drill us in your own image
a colander that can’t hold water,
farms caving in drained sink holes beneath.
Drill until amalgams turn our teeth grey,
our bones fracked and fractured.
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Drill it in
that billionaires are a superior race
because we still don’t get it.
Drill our skulls into frontal lobotomies,
milling our brains with the inane premise
that veterans don’t deserve healthcare
and the elderly don’t deserve
funds they worked for.
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We know there are more than the two genders
of white male and Stepford wife.
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Drill it into normalcy—
the military unleashed on its own people,
the masked orange taco gestapo
as they go from field to field,
door to door.
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Then, drill some more.
Put us on mute—
multimedia censorship.
Undermine libraries and public schools.
We already knew history repeats itself—
on two sides of the penny bitcoin.
The indigenous, forbidden to speak their language,
kept their power alive behind closed doors.
The enslaved, not allowed to read or write,
followed the signs sewn into quilt patterns.
Monarchs and oligarchs,
books burning, bullets drilling
in revolution, civil war, world war—
we will find another way, a better way.
Erase history if you can.
Erase the mentally ill, the homeless,
the poor, the disabled, the elderly,
those on a spectrum,
those bona fide with a genius IQ,
the artists, the writers, musicians
except for an American band
to play for your disgusting dance
like that of a tick before
jumping on its prey.
Oh, what a day
for supporters who hate melatonin
more than felons and pedophiles!
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DOGE data drilling might locate
and make us disappear,
but memory only fosters our courage.
We will remember.
We will not be remembered for our fear.
What more will you be remembered for?
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Drill until you hit rock bottom,
blaming Canada for Fentanyl.
Drill until you come out in China.
Drill until you try to buy
a Nobel Peace Prize
by trading Alaska to Russia
for an interim cease fire
during your term.
Drill and chisel
a moonscape across Earth
to better view your golf courses
and Gaza Resort
safely from your starship
in outer space,
while we get grilled.
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Your fake resuscitation
with a syringe of adrenaline
drilled into the heart of Appalachia.
X marks the rot
where oil and coal
are still dead.
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Drill until the bowels of Appalachia erode
creeks and rivers with toxic sludge.
Deforest the temperate rain forest
by way of tropical hurricane from climate change.
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We already learned from coal mine strikes
and strategic planning at Highlander
how to organize—
protest songs on standby,
“Which side are you on?”
When you start deporting our people,
“We shall not be moved.”
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Spill out Bibles that spell out
the commandments you break,
that the meek shall inherit the Earth.
Go ahead. Drill, Baby, drill.
We see clearly still—
through each hole
drilled long ago into these lands
and through Christ’s hands.
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Those first four years
were just a drill.
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This is not a Drill.
I repeat. This is not a Drill:
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children under school desks,
hands covering heads.
Hands off what’s in and out of their heads!
From redwood forests to blue ridge mountains,
children too hungry to learn,
hands off Head Start,
14-year-old girls,
and countless young women.
You can no longer drill.
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Hilda Downer, High Country Poet Laureate
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Joseph Bathanti passed your call onto me as he knows I am Appalachian through and through. I live about 50 miles from where I grew up beside the oldest mica mines in the world. Mitchell County is mineral laden, and now threatened by AI’s demand. When I wrote this poem, I was only thinking about the greed behind the use of fossil fuels, decimating the environment, and denying global warming. Now, the demon is sniffing at the windows of my home. Thank you for considering this highly political poem I read at the first Hands Off Rally in my town of Boone, NC. However, I am sure you might be expecting something more like the second poem I am sending you, Mother Tree.
— Hilda
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Mother Tree
The way the Mother Tree cares for the forest
makes me ashamed of selfish humans.
The tall Mother Tree can harvest more sun
though holes leak light from her leaf-knit shawl
to showcase a pink lady’s-slipper here
or pat a moss draped root there.
Through phototropism and photosynthesis,
she toils harder than the rest
to produce excess carbon and sugar
for sharing not only with her saplings
but also with other species,
both deciduous and conifer.
She can recognize her own kin
but serves the whole community.
Her roots spread far, symbiotic with fungi
that network with other trees.
If one is sick, she sends healing nutrients.
If one is in danger, she warns them all.
Loggers that cut the big trees
allow frail ones to grow,
leaving the forest to pine
without diversity.
Think of the old growth forest
where the Mother Tree lay dying.
Think of the roads cut through.
Just one house is built,
and gone is the sharp, dark smell of black walnut.
Gone is the wizened Carolina hemlock, twisted at its base.
Think of the trees felled,
replaced by utility poles
for communication far inferior
to the Mother Tree’s instinctive telepathy.
I think of my own mother, gone now,
her mind gone long before.
What traditions still bind us?
After my grandmother passed,
aunts, uncles, and cousins no longer met in Bandana
for a fried chicken dinner after church
or made an apple stack cake for the Buchanan reunion
after the Decoration at Silver Chapel Church.
We all grew up playing house under the umbrella shade of laurel,
disclosing angry crawfish under creek rocks,
and plummeting from grapevine swings.
How do we recognize our kinship
or ourselves
if not in the chapel of the woods?
The entrance hugs us
with the wide-open arms of orange azalea.
Our traditions rest upon a log pew
cushioned with the clean scent of moss and musky mushrooms,
centered by autumn’s kaleidoscope;
flanked by crepuscular rays
filtered by the Mother Tree.
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Hilda Downer, High Country Poet Laureate
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❀ ✿ ✾ ❁
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A Wood
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Some would distinguish nothing here but oaks,
Proud heads conversant with the power and glory
Of heaven’s rays or heaven’s thunderstrokes,
And adumbrators to the understory,
Where, in their shade, small trees of modest leanings
Contend for light and are content with gleanings.
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And yet here’s dogwood: overshadowed, small,
But not inclined to droop and count its losses,
It cranes its way to sunlight after all,
And signs the air of May with Maltese crosses.
And here’s witch hazel, that from underneath
Great vacant boughs will bloom in winter’s teeth.
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Given a source of light so far away
That nothing, short or tall, comes very near it,
Would it not take a proper fool to say
That any tree has not the proper spirit?
Air, water, earth and fire are to be blended,
But no one style, I think, is recommended.
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Richard Wilbur
selected by Paul Karnowski
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The trees in Wilbur’s woods remind us that we all live together, and each of us, big or small, has an important role to play.
— Paul
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✾
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Gaze
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How to spend my days,
and where to fix my gaze?
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Out a wistful window,
to soar with swirling swallows,
brushing wings against
the summer sky.
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Or at the misty mirror,
looking at a lump of flesh
tethered to the ground,
no feathers to be found.
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Paul Karnowski
first published in Grey Sparrow Journal, January, 2026
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Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.
— Aldo Leopold
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A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
— Aldo Leopold
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Thank you for celebrating the month of April with International Earth Day (April 22) and National Poetry Month. And thank you, Readers, who have selected poems to share that connect us to our planet and each other. We will continue posting EARTH POETRY throughout the month of April – and beyond April as well, of course, since EVERY DAY is EARTH DAY!
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Thanks again for joining the conversation.
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— Bill
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Thanks Les. Witness to the pain and the joy. ---B