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CENTENNIAL  CELEBRATION
NATURE POETRY AT WALDEN POND
Water
This is a song of our planet,
wind tangled in watery vapor,
its voices angled in the rain,
soft in spray that haloes wave tops,
then high and keening,
careening ashore on a great northern lake,
the deep roll and tremble of the rivers-
Amazon, Mississippi, Volga, Irrawaddy, Congo.
These are the tides of blood that tell us
our grandparents are the oceans
and land is but a fragile accident.
Before humans, there was life.
Before knowledge, there was being.
Before breathing, there was pulse.
Old men feel it in the sunset sky
above a clean horizon, cloudless, velvet.
A child catches it in the giddy dome of pale summer,
tumbling on a clover blanket over a sweet grass carpet,
rattled by flashing spears of sunlight,
mounds of honeysuckle, the attention of animals.
Women know it in choral music alive in the air,
round things,
the slight drag of skin a fingertip runs along,
silver moonlight settling in pools of memory.
This should be your poem,
what the world is like beyond the sidewalk
when you stop the car and drift away from concrete ribbons
and discover water-
alive, brilliant, deep, cool and sun-warmed,
star-speckled, ineffably buoyant and pure.
Michael R. Brown
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It was one of those crystalline January days
that can be so cold, the kind of day when you see hawks
sitting in trees along the Mass Pike, facing into the sun.
I was driving my daughter Kathleen back to college,
and from time to time I’d point out the kind of tree
a hawk would like to sit in.
After three or four trees she asked,
“What is this thing with hawks?
Do you think you were a hawk
in a previous life or something?”
I smiled and said, “Perhaps,”
and talked no more of hawks.
But on the long ride home alone
I decided she was almost right, that
I’LL COME BACK AS A HAWK
and maybe some day, as I drift upon an updraft
the top of your blonde head will catch my eye
maybe as you jog along a country road
and my hawk heart will pump a simple
unfamiliar signal
not kill-and-eat, although there’s something
in it like my feeling for the prey, that it
was good to kill and good to eat
but that it’s over now
not sleep because the sun’s still high
but there is something in it
that is like sleep
not mate because it’s not that time, there is
no other hawk in sight; not feed-your-young
because I have no young to feed
yet there is something in it
about mating, about young
not fly-great-distances across the path of sun
because I’m where I’m at ‘till I get cold
still, there is something of
great distances about it
not play-at-aerobatics with a raven
although there is something in it about with
Requiring no action, it will be gone as quickly as it came
and being hawk, I’ll never think of it again
A shadow passing on the edge of consciousness
might nudge you to glance up,
and, squinting in the sun
you’ll see me, dark and sharp
motionless but exquisitely mobile
sliding sideways down the bright blue sky,
your young blue eyes discerning separation
of the feathers
in my wingtips.
Any remembering
will be done by you.
Jack McCarthy
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Ozarks
The rain smells of the Ozarks, summer,
waiting for lightning to crack the green hills.
That old story: morning, the ticking clock
driving you out where the heat bugs scream
the same relentless rhythm, no one else awake,
no cartoons on Sunday, no escape
from a seven-year-old’s unshakable notion.
That’s morning. Afternoons, the rain in thick drops,
sometimes hail big enough to kill horses, or
your father.
I met a man who lived there when I did,
and hated it. I didn’t ask if he remembered
the rambling wet smell of the place, and the noise
in all seasons, the uncountable singing throats.
I don’t know if the thunder shook him down
under the bed; I believed in true wrath, just missing me.
Today I saw clouds, breathed in, waited.
A notion surfaced, dry and white as bone.
That old story.
Laura Cherry
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SOMETIMES (DANA’S FRIDAY)
Sometimes
When Skies are blue
When the true colors of the distant sun
Dance - through the atmosphere
Deflecting - from a prism’s dispersed view
The spectrum's hues
Against a moistened sky
I think of you
As I gaze upon this tranquil view
Its pristine - beauty
Permeates my selfish being
And somewhere deep within
It liberates - my caged - my troubled soul
And somewhat - like in spiritual glory
In harmony - with the beauty before me
I am - with you
In expanse - firmament above and before me
This visual arch - a heavenly wonder
In all - its magnificent glory
A creative reflection
Honoring - nature’s pot of gold
The true treasure - existing here below
The colors - of those
That inhabit this world
And sometimes
When my rainbow dissipates
When again before me
Nature’s - precious living colors
Blindly choose - to segregate
I still take time - to reach for you
I still believe - I am one with you
But then I wonder
DID YOU -- SEE IT TOO?
Winston R. Jones
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Between Here and There
There is the passage
from here to there---
it's a go,
move, move
experience;
My usual attitude,
there's no time to rest--
no time to stop---
no time to smell the lilacs.
I pass mile after mile
of trees,
blooming their freshness of Spring;
mile and miles of cycleable roads,
of countryside,
roadside
stop and find a prize shops,
all calling my name---
for all the time in the world
I wish I had,
packed into this short day
I spend
on the road;
Miles
passing behind me,
passing me by---
I wish I could
fall through the cracks of time
between here and there
and do it all.
Carla Schwartz
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Native Song (excerpt)
To be native here
To look at the night sky and know
when and where Orion will appear
on the southern horizon each winter
To watch my seed take root
To remember that I will always return here
No matter how many journeys I take
To touch the ground with my hands and feet
as well as my mind’s eye
To feel the echoes of my ancestors
resonating inside me
like a singer inside a hollow tree
To hope for seven generation
in concert with the seasons
To stand within the rain
as readily as within
the circle of sunlight
To wait for the wisdom to plant
To grow like a hundred daffodils
every spring
To walk gently into compassion
mourning what is gone
enjoying what comes
Taking care like the two rivers
that gently merge
in the valley below
To dream of what might be enough
to make a simple
obvious answer
Let me settle with the Earth
Let the Earth settle in me
Douglas Bishop
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RED
I love you dangerously
like the flash of light
that I am inside.
Wild
and pure
out of this reality
you could never take me home.
I'm stuck
up in the air
like one tree held up by
another
in a frozen arabesque
I could stay there forever
you may have to
burn me down.
Stephanie Kornfeld |
The Last Wood (excerpt )
A granite slab
shaped like the opening
of an eye
lies in the snow
The words engraved upon it
bear witness
to the woods
the pond
and the sky
“Beneath these stones”
--the stones upon which
the words are chiseled
“Lies the chimney foundation”
--it does not mark a gravesite
“of Thoreau’s cabin”
--but the home of
someone who found life
“Go thou my incense upward
from this hearth”
--a sprig of pine
lies upon the stone
That he should leave
in the midst of his broken task
which none can finish--
--One plants
Another waters
God gives the increase
“Have you made peace with God, Henry David?
“I didn’t know we had quarreled.”
“Can you see what lies beyond?”
“One world at a time.”
--A circle of light to pass through...
Richard Cambridge
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goose pond
formation of fat geese
wings in low overhead
banks right
spreads out to land
on the loud
spoken command
of the leaders
who fly the outermost positions
of this ragged
half-chevron
they splash down
and start up a racket
just fussing and carrying on
like flyers on leave
all boast and bravado
i sit in sunny silence
on this table rock
inhaling the cool
sumptuous beauty
of the spring afternoon
‘till the harmonica on my hip
finally burns a hole
in the pocket
of my solitude
and I stand on the rock
to play
today i feel good
so i play free
real me
‘till i disappear
into a melody
that has a mind of its own
campfire blue
and bittersweet
i look up
laugh out loud
almost drop my harp
to see my spellbound audience
long necks craning forward
gathered in a semicircle
at water’s edge
in total silence
i laugh again
to realize
my responsibility
so!
it’s a show you want!
i leap down from the rock
and into the performance
of my life
i play those lucky birds
everything i dream
i only want
to make it clear to them
how wild and free
my kind can be
how passionate
how tender
how deep
from all over the pond
they gracefully converge
to listen in mute wonder
to this creature
who speaks
their rude language
wonkonk honk heeonk
speaks their language
and can make it sing
like a songbird sings
i bask in that wonder
i bathe in that bond
plunge into mystery
come up
reborn
Andy Levesque |
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