Poems for Earth Day (from the collection: Wild Song: Poems of the Natural World)
Morning Song by Don Colburn
Day breaks open artlessly
across a field of switchgrass tossing
wild and easy in the windsell.
The weedy fastness gives way to a widening
brim of eastlight blazing the mist.
Spring is the dangerous season, awakening
this bee-crazed meadow to overgrowing–
and in me, awe, and ache, avid to begin
like birds and the earth all over.
Pileated by Ronald Wallace
It’s much too big for words,
this Woody Woodpecker of a bird,
this cartoon creature
all wires and pulleys, that slams
into the old dead elm and,
for a moment, rejuvenates it:
a flicker of fire, a flare
on the gray, decaying bark.
And before we can even say it’s a,
it’s a, a . . . it’s gone,
this remnant, this
premise, taking
the sky, the light, the summer,
our blue eyes with it.
The Earth by Andres Rodriguez
She scooped a handful of shiny pebbles
from the riverbed, held them
a long time to her face,
a morning of clear light all around us.
The river stopped, the far hills glowed,
and from where we knelt
on the gritty bank
the soft summer air moved on us.
She took care for the smallest things:
remembering to touch
the unmoved stones, to breathe
with her body the whole expanse of light.
All day I dreamed the earth was rising
from bedrock, from alluvium,
to the wind’s slow motion,
a dance taking ages to perform.
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P.S. And to all those who garden, keep up your good work with the earth!
Nice blog, Maureen. It is aesthetically pleasing, restful to the eye. I have read the Earth Day Poems so far. Happy Earth Day. It is the day after. Rain, rain. Very auspicious.
Sheila, hi! thanx for reading & posting a comment (!) You know i thought about this, too — the rain and the Nor’easter storm on Earth Day in the Northeast & New England. It was unsettling and felt mournful somehow…