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Earth Day – Afterword

April 26, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
April 26, 2024
 . 
In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
++++++ Robert Lynd (1879-1949) – naturalist
 . 
To see a wren in a bush, call it a wren and go on walking is to have seen nothing. To see a bird and stop, watch, feel, forget yourself for a moment, to be in the bushy shadows, maybe then feel wren – that is to have joined in a larger moment with the world.
++++++ Gary Snyder
 . 
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a song bird will come.
++++++ Chinese proverb
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
November
 . 
It is an old drama
this disappearance of the leaves,
this seeming death
of the landscape.
In a later scene,
or earlier,
the trees like gnarled magicians
produce handkerchiefs
of leaves
out of empty branches.
 . 
And we watch.
We are like children
at this spectacle
of leaves,
as if one day we too
will open the wooden doors
of our coffins
and come out smiling
and bowing
all over again.
 . 
Linda Pastan (1932-2023)
from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998, W W Norton & Co, © 1999
 . 
Shared by Bradley Samore, Plano TX, who writes:
 . 
This poem by Linda Pastan reminds me of our hushed wonder toward the non-human and our tendency to imagine ourselves in relation to what we see. Perhaps there is no objective way to view something as each species, each person, has their own limitations and reference point. Like Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall”, Pastan makes the connection between the leaves falling and our own human death but also hints at the possibility/impossibility of our rebirth, another budding.
 . 
++++++ Bradley
 . 
❦
 . 
Revelation
 . 
Nothing compares to exploring the land
++++++ but what of becoming part of it
 . 
to sit so still that lizards
++++++ mate by my sandaled feet
 . 
to kneel at the grave where from shadows
++++++ a fox approaches unafraid
 . 
to lie on the grass as daylight fades
++++++ and birds feather the branches above
 . 
Bradley Samore
first appeared in Hoot
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The charm which Henry [David Thoreau] uses for bird and frog and mink, is patience. They will not come to him, or show him aright, until he becomes a log among logs, sitting still for hours in the same place; then they come around him and to him, and show themselves at home.
++++++ Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his journal, May 11, 1858.
 . 
I hope you love birds, too.  It is economical.  It saves going to Heaven.
++++++ Emily Dickinson
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Kinship
Rootless and restless and
warmblooded, we
blaze in the flare that
blinds us to that slow,
tall, fraternal fire of life
as strong
now as in the seedling
two centuries ago.
 . 
Ursula K LeGuin
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The cockroach and the birds were both here long before we were. Both could get along very well without us, although it is perhaps significant that of the two the cockroach would miss us more.
++++++ Joseph Wood Krutch, from The Twelve Seasons (1949)
 . 
More than at any other time, we feel the strangeness of birds when we stop and pick up a feather in our path. There is nothing on Earth to compare it to; there is no material like it, no form, nothing that functions quite the same way.
++++++ Bruce Brooks, from On the Wing
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Landscape with Jeffers and the Connecticut River
 . 
Oat stalks hang their oat-heavy heads.
Panic grass shakes in the wind
off a goldfinch’s wing. Cause,
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ effect, and cause.
 . 
Drone, like the bee, of goldenrod and aster,
tool of the stick-tight and cockleburr,
I park and wade into high riverside grasses.
 . 
A dog gnaws on a box turtle, a spider rides
a floating log, straining the air of its midges and leafbits.
A fisherman lazy as late summer current,
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ casts, reels, and casts.
 . 
It occurs to me I am alive, which is to say
I won’t be soon. Robinson Jeffers
from Carmel Point, in “an unbroken field of poppy and lupin”
 . 
ashamed of us all (of himself ), took solace in time,
in salt, water, and rock, in knowing
all things human “will ebb, and all/
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ Their works dissolve.”
 . 
Me, too. And I’m not always so patient. I’ve caught myself
wishing our spoiler species gone, just swept away,
returned to rust and compost for more deserving earthly forms.
 . 
Meanwhile, flint arrowheads turn up among the plastic
picnic sporks, the glacial crags and bottom silt.
Hawks roost across the river on the now defunct
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ nuclear power plant cooling tower,
 . 
flotsam left at the human high water mark.
Like mussel shells, like driftwood or seedpod,
like the current’s corrugations in the sand.
 . 
Here, on this side, a woodchuck sits up, lustrous,
fat on her chestnut haunches, (she thinks herself
queen of her narrow realm) and munches
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ the fisherman’s crust.
 . 
Who wouldn’t smile? Who doesn’t pity—and love—
the woodchuck not only despite but for her like-human smugness?
How can I not through her intercession forgive
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ for now a few things human.
 . 
Jennifer Atkinson
from The Thinking Eye, Parlor Press, © 2016
 . 
Jennifer Atkinson writes in Poems.com:
 . 
But how do we live with our knowledge and the emotional cloud of fear, guilt, anger, grief, and helplessness, a cloud that surrounds us, each of us alone, and all of us together? That cloud has become intrinsic to my ecopoetical work. Burdened with the beauty and loss and malicious awfulness ahead, weighted with the anxiety that hits whenever a winter day dawns without frost on the ground or another ‘unprecedented’ downpour rings in the gutter, how do I live?
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
++++++ Henry David Thoreau
 . 
We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies, the song of the birds, if we can’t see the stars at night.
++++++ Thomas Berry
 . 
It is the ancient wisdom of birds that battles are best fought with song.
++++++Richard Nelson
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Rain Light
 . 
All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning.
 . 
W.S. Merwin (1927-2019)
from The Shadow of Sirius, Copper Canyon Press, © 2009
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
My favorite weather is bird-chirping weather.
++++++ Terri Guillemets
 . 
You can observe a lot by just watching.
++++++ Yogi Berra
 . 
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
++++++ Betty Smith, from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
Special thanks throughout these Earth Day celebrations to my hiking buddy and nature guide Mike Barnett, who has let me into the wilderness and won’t let me leave. Most of the quotations included in these sections are compiled in Mike’s Medicine Bag, which he carries with him into every new adventure
 . 
And EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS to my companion in the universe, Linda, who allows the cosmos to flow through her pen onto paper. She has given permission for me to use a few of her drawings throughout these Earth Day celebrations.
 . 
++++++  Bill
 . 
 . 

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, Imagery | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

EARTH DAY EVERY DAY

April 24, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
April 24, 2024
 . 
Our true home lies outside, deep in the wilderness of forest and mountain, river and desert and sea, the source of our being and the destiny of our great meandering blundering dreaming journey through time. Like Odysseus in his wanderings, we are homeward bound whether we know it or not.
++++++ Edward Abbey
 . 
Wilderness has drawn humans closer to God throughout history. Why should we, in the twentieth century, believe this is suddenly no longer true? Long after the Exodus, in a time of recurring apostasy, Hosea spoke of God wishing to ‘allure’ the people back into the wilderness yet again — this time to the parched hills beyond Jericho. There, wrote the prophet, God would ‘speak tenderly’ to them.
++++++ David Douglas
 . 
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
++++++ John Muir
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
[Come wilderness into our homes]
 . 
Come wilderness into our homes
break the windows come
with your roots and your worms
spread yourself over our wishes
our waste-sorting systems our prostheses
and outstanding payments
cover us with your rustling greenery
and your spores cover us that we may
become green: green and reverent
green and manifest green and replaceable
come weather with your storms
and sweep the slates off the roofs come
with snow and hail smash
through the collective sleep
we are all enjoying in our beds
our worn rationalizations come ice
and form glaciers over the shadow banks
and our drive for liquidity
come through the cracks under the doors
you desert with your sands fill
our desolation up until it forms into a solid mass
rise up over the search-and-rescue teams
and our growth compulsion trickle into
the control panels of the missiles
and the missile defense systems into
the think tanks and the hearts of internet trolls
just leave the hedgehogs with their
snuffling so that it may calm us
come rising sea levels
up over our shorelines both the developed
and the undeveloped the homey
lowland areas wash
jellyfish into our soup bowls
and ramshorn snails into our hair
as we swim in each other’s direction panicked
with our yearning for one another
because almost nothing is left because it’s all gone
and thoroughly soaked through with regrets
finger-pointing and tranquilizers
come earthquakes shatter the apartments
which we built on the foundations
of how we always did everything
come tremors fill the mine shafts
the end of work and
the literature of redemption bury anger
and affection and all manner of added values
swallow up the memories come tremors
hurry so that the bedrock covers us
so we are covered with water desert weather
and over everything that which covers all the wilderness
 . 
Daniela Danz
Translated from the German by Monika Cassel
[Komm Wildnis in unsere Häuser] from the journal POETRY,December 2023
 . 
Shared by Bill Griffin, Elkin NC, who writes:
 . 
To the ancient mind, wilderness was dangerous, something to be feared and held at bay even while mysterious and fascinating. In recent times, as we’ve come to consider ourselves ‘modern’, wilderness has been conquered – we control it, we rule it, we exploit and use wilderness. Indigenous voices tell us we are one with the wild and can only be fully ourselves when we know and respect wildness. Romantic voices long to return to Eden and live in harmony with wilderness. The voices of mystics and spiritual seekers remind us that wildness is in us and part of us, that all things are one and that we have cut off a vital part of ourselves when we separate ourselves from the wild.
 . 
This poem by Daniela Danz brings us full circle to our 21st century shuddering realization – wild nature is back and beyond our control. For a few centuries we’ve kept wilderness at arm’s length, just outside the widening circle of our campfires, but now the seas rise and the storms mount. All of our consumption economies and gods of growth and development will not keep us safe. In the literal sense, wilderness comes into our homes, welcome or not. In the metaphorical sense, perhaps it is not too late indeed to invite it in, ‘come’. Perhaps we are on the threshold of a new age in which we admit our part in wild nature and its part in us. Or perhaps we shall be covered.
 . 
++++++ Bill
 . 
 . 
❦
 . 
My own poem, Spent, begins with fatalism and regret but discovers, I hope, some communion with wild nature to end on a note of connection. – Bill
 . 
Spent
 . 
Coreopsis spent, limp rays curling,
curdled disk and one lone fly like aster’s
dry winged seed perched on delusion
that the head still holds some promise:
I turn away from everything sere
and brown – where else would I turn
this sullen afternoon? until
 . 
she calls me to join her, leaf strewn trail
beside Grassy Creek where it sings
to itself oblivious, two soft pairs
of footfalls among fern and shadow,
partridge berry makes its own warm light
and ground cedar runs rings around us:
 . 
I crouch before a cranefly orchid, determined
buds dainty as dewclaws still unopened
mid-July (and absent basal winter leaves
pocked olive but upturn them for satin
underleaf maroon), yet while she reminds me
 . 
about co-evolution, blossoms that couple
with their pollinators, I can’t stop seeing
that useless fly, bulging maroon ommatidia,
wings’ blush iridescence, proboscis needle
dripping one sour jewel spent, until
 . 
for just this moment the world opens itself
around us and I open to its secrets, kingfisher
rattle from another planet, fecund dank
of moss and fungus, every vireo our familiar,
swelling benediction breeze that gossips
among beech and laurel and promises
 . 
always, always something new.
 . 
Bill Griffin
finalist for the James Applewhite Poetry Prize of North Carolina Literary Review, 2023
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us.  We are not the only experiment.
++++++ R. Buckminster Fuller
 . 
We cannot be truly ourselves in any adequate manner without all our companion beings throughout the earth.
++++++ Thomas Berry
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Tyger
 . 
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
 . 
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?
 . 
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
 . 
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
 . 
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
 . 
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
 . 
William Blake (1757-1827)
https://poets.org/poem/tyger ; this poem is in the public domain
 . 
Shared by Les Brown, Troutman NC, who writes:
 . 
I love Blake’s Tyger not only because of its incredible poetic craft and rhythm, but for its recognition of the beauty and duality of the tiger as a creature of strength and beauty but also an instrument involved in the balance of nature.
 . 
++++++ Les
 . 
 .
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Has blotted out man’s image and his cry.
++++++ William Butler Yeats
 . 
It seems clear, as I’ve argued, that the humanities can be broadened enough to make the connection [with science] in three ways. First, escape the bubble in which the unaided human sensory world remains unnecessarily trapped. Second, sink roots by connecting the deep history of genetic evolution to the history of cultural evolution. And third, diminish the extreme anthropocentrism that hobbles the bulk of humanistic endeavors.
++++++ Edward O. Wilson, The Origins of Creativity (2017)
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Bread and Roses
 . 
When the big sea has stopped rising
and the maps we’re through revising
and I can think of storms as friends,
I’ll go down to the beach again.
 . 
I’ll stand still there in that bright surf
and sing a song to this dear Earth.
I’ll sing for climate change to end.
I’ll sing tears for where we have been.
 . 
I’ll sing to things that we have learned –
the fossils we should not have burned
releasing the power of former suns,
bringing losses that cannot be undone.
 . 
Sad losses the children will inherit.
Species gone without much credit,
thanks to the piles of money earned
and all the corners left unturned.
 . 
I’ll sing to anger rising still.
Our leaders let firms do their will.
The people did assert control
but not before the barons stole.
 . 
Our job is now to make the best,
finding purpose in what is left.
It is a joy to live to fight
and on that beach to fly two kites.
 . 
Gus Speth
from Let Your Tears Water the Earth, Watershed Publications © 2023
 . 
Shared by Sam Love, New Bern NC, who writes:
 . 
I love the lyrical nature of this poem using the “songs” as a way to tie assaults on our planet’s web together. Also the transition from songs for the abuses to singing “to anger rising still”. A call to action. And here is one of my poems that is more literal with the theme of Earth Day and all things being connected.
 . 
++++++ Sam
 . 
 . 
❦
 . 
The Web
 . 
No one is alone
We are all part
of life’s web
 . 
In each breath we inhale
remnants of star dust
and exhale nourishment
for the Earth’s plants
 . 
Each action we take
to support our bloated
lifestyle tugs on a strand
of the planet’s web
 . 
To understand our impact
visualize a spider’s web where
pulling on one strand
alters the whole
 . 
Sam Love
from Earth Resonance, The Poetry Box ©  2022
 .
Shared by Gus Speth, South Carolina, who writes:
 . 
The following poem by Sam Love is lovely but cautionary. It reminds us that we humans are part of an interconnected web of life here on Earth and part also of the journey of the universe. And gently it says we should act like it.
 . 
++++++ Gus
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
We need the tonic of wilderness… the silence, the cold and solitude… to be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor… pasturing freely where we never wander.
++++++ Henry David Thoreau
 . 
Wildness made man but man cannot make wildness. He can only spare it.
++++++ David Brower
 . 
Wilderness is two things — fact and feeling. It is a fund of knowledge and a spring of influence. It is the ultimate source of health — terrestrial and human.
++++++ Benton MacKaye, the man who planned and conceived the Appalachian Trail
 . 
Any creative deed at the human level is a continuation of the creativity of the universe.
++++++ Thomas Berry
 . 
Life is a chemical system able to replicate itself through autocatalysis and to make mistakes that gradually increase the efficiency of autocatalysis.
++++++ National Geographic, Jan. ‘03
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
Special thanks throughout these Earth Day celebrations to my hiking buddy and nature guide Mike Barnett, who has let me into the wilderness and won’t let me leave. Most of the quotations included in these sections are compiled in Mike’s Medicine Bag, which he carries with him into every new adventure
 . 
And EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS to my companion in the universe, Linda French Griffin, who allows the cosmos to flow through her pen onto paper. She has given permission for me to use a few of her drawings throughout these Earth Day celebrations.
 .  
++++++  Bill . 
Doughton Park Tree -- 5/1/2021
 . 

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, Imagery | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

EARTH DAY 2024

April 22, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
April 22, 2024
 . 
Whatever attributes we claim as unique to the human species, such as our propensity for art and science and spirituality – these are gifts of the ground. Curiosity and exploration and awe require a world – a ground – to grow up from and in conversation with.
++++++ Eileen Crist, ecologist, 4/22/24, in The Sun, December 2020
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
In Memoriam Mae Noblitt
 . 
This is just a place:
we go around, distanced,
yearly in a star’s
 . 
atmosphere, turning
daily into and out of
direct light and
 . 
slanting through the
quadrant seasons: deep
space begins at our
 . 
heels, nearly rousing
us loose: we look up
or out so high, sight’s
 . 
silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves
 . 
coiled and free in airs
and oceans: water picks
up mineral shadow and
 . 
plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but
 . 
is love a reality we
made here ourselves—
and grief—did we design
 . 
that—or do these,
like currents, whine
in and out among us merely
 . 
as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,
 . 
that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with
 . 
us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not
 . 
so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.
 . 
A. R. Ammons (1926 – 2001)
from A Coast of Trees by A.R. Ammons. Copyright © 1981 by A.R. Ammons.
 . 
Shared by Jane Hazelman, Elkin, NC, who writes:
 . 
My only comments would be… and it’s interesting, now that I think carefully about it…
This poem caught me at time when I was grieving the loss of my father who died the same week my family moved to NC…. I felt the ground beneath my feet dropping away… I needed an anchor and somehow the poem nudged me to connect my spirit to the natural world of spider silk, streams and trees, breezes – that comfort was all around me, holding me to its self.
 . 
++++++ Jane
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Erase the lines: I pray you not to love classifications.
The thing is like a river, from source to sea-mouth
One flowing life.
++++++ Robinson Jeffers
 . 

Klondike Lake Dam, mural by Eva Crawford

 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Beauty of Things
 . 
To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things—earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars—
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality—
For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
 . 
Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962)
from Poetry, Vol. 77, No. 4, Jan., 1951
 . 
Shared by Catherine Carter, Cullowhee NC, who writes:
 . 
I’ve selected this one because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about paying attention as a holy act, maybe THE holy act, and, if not “the sole business” of poetry, at least a large part of it.  So much of what we lose and destroy is because we won’t or can’t give attention; we think of the tree we cut as “ordinary”, as “just” a tree, of the insects we poison as just flaws in our experience of the world, as if our experiences of the world were all that mattered. 
 . 
Along those lines, I’m also including the final poem from my book, Larvae of the Nearest Stars, “The Promise”.  That poem first appeared in Still: The Journal, October 2017, and was then reprinted in the collection.  Its tone is very different, and I certainly wasn’t thinking about “The Beauty of Things” when I wrote it…but it’s basically promising to do what Jeffers is talking about—paying attention to what’s all around us, what we sweep away or walk right over or destroy without ever knowing it because we think it’s “ordinary.”  And I thought of this one, Bill, because of your wonderful post about the tiny, tiny flowers.
 . 
+++++++ Catherine
 . 
❦
 . 
The Promise
 . 
Life-root, blazing out in your golden rags.
Killdeer, skimming the soccer field,
pealing the glad word of May.  Soft lamb’s
quarter, powdered with pewter dust
that might’ve come from the Horsehead
Nebula, putting spinach to shame
with your mineral riches.  Wood
thrush trilling your deep flute-
notes from the high canopy, almost never
seen.  Tiny henbit, more glamorous
and sexy in your freckled orchid pink
than Marilyn Monroe’s…et cetera.
Et cetera.  The list goes on longer
and deeper than any human voice,
and how many hear any of you
over the clamor of ego and ad,
how many know you were ever
here? Nor can I save you
when they come with the mowers,
the poisons, nor make the world
plant milkweed for its true-born monarchs.
What I can do is what I am
doing:  look for you. Listen
as you proclaim your many
names in all the tongues
of earth.  Speak those names back:
as long as lichens
star this mountain’s boulder-bones
in flat seaglass rosettes, so that even the rock
blooms some wordless joy
into the day’s high air,  I will
not cease.  I will go on
doing my work in this world.
 . 
Catherine Carter
from Larvae of the Nearest Stars, LSU Press.© 2019
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Both from an ecological perspective and from Genesis’ point of view, goodness resides in the community, the web of life, in the relations of the whole biosphere.
++++++ Rabbi Ellen Bernstein
 . 
Look at the animals roaming the forest: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the birds flying across the sky: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the tiny insects crawling in the grass: God’s spirit dwells within them.
++++++ Pelagius (4th century Celtic theologian)
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Miracles
 . 
Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
 . 
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
 . 
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
        ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?
 . 
Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)
Collected in The Golden Treasury of Poetry ; in the public domain.
 . 
Shared by Nancy Barnett, Eustis FL, who writes:
 . 
My brother Tom was a wonderful gift giver. We had lost our brother Frank in June 1962 when I was 11 years old. Tom gave me a book during that time by Louis Untermeyer, The Golden Treasury of Poetry (1959). 
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When I went back to school in the fall our 6th grade teacher Mrs. Heinlein asked the class to bring something to read aloud and I chose Miracles from Untermeyer’s collection. I loved the image of nature and the hopefulness of life being seen as a miracle. I knew nothing about Walt Whitman then. (The version in The Golden Treasury of Poetry was somewhat sanitized for the young reader.)
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The Poet Laureate Joy Harjo noted that her love of poetry was fostered by the very same book.
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++++++ Nancy
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Indeed, one outcome of my watch at the mandala has been to realize that we create wonderful places by giving them our attention, not by finding ‘pristine’ places that will bring wonder to us.
++++++ David George Haskell
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from The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature, in which Dr. Haskell spent a year visiting almost every day a small circle of ground in the southern Appalachian forest, his mandala, and simply opened himself to its presence.
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Crane Migration, Platte River
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I am in danger of forgetting the cranes,
their black wavering lines in the sky,
how they came as if from the past,
how they came of one mind,
wheeling, swirling over the river.
I am in danger of losing
the purling sound they make,
and the motion of their long wings.
We had stopped the car on the river road
and got out, you and I,
the wind intermittent in our faces
as if it too came from a distant place
and wavered and began again, gusting.
Line after line of cranes
came out of the horizon,
sliding overhead.
The voices of cranes
harsh and exciting.
Something old in me answered.
What did it say? Maybe it said Kneel.
I almost forgot the ancient sound,
back in time, back, and back.
The road, the two of us at the guardrail,
low scraggle of weeds flattening and rising
in wind. This is what I must retain:
my knees hit the damp sand of the roadside.
This is what I remember:
you knelt too. We were wordless together
before the birds as they landed on the sandbars
and night came on.
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Marjorie Saiser
from The Woman in the Moon, University of Nebraska Press, Backwaters Series, © 2018
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Shared by Michael Beadle, Raleigh NC, who writes:
The opening line to this poem from the anthology The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal is a call to us all:  against forgetting. Against ignoring the beauty that startles us. It dares us to step deeper into the mystery, turns us into wide-eyed children again as we look up at the heavens, peer into a clear lake, gaze across a field or behold a magnificent tree or bird. This poem reminds us that nature is within range, that it has not disappeared (yet), though we humans are doing our damnedest to foul up the sky, poison the waters, plunder the earth for profit. This poem is about holding ourselves still in that moment of awe, stopping our busy lives to listen to the wind, to the flap of wings, to the crunch of gravel, the swish of tall grass. In such moments of grace and wonder, we are, quite literally, brought to our knees as we show respect for the world around us, the world that breathes into us, the world we have to be reminded of from time to time that was here long before we were and will be here long after we are gone. 
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++++++ Michael
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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, naturalist
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I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
++++++ Henry David Thoreau, fromWalking
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Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones – inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones – rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. Attention is the beginning of devotion.
++++++ Mary Oliver
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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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IMG_0880, tree

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