Earth Day

Poem-A-Day April 22: The “Change” in Climate Change

Hello Friends,
Today is Earth Day, so we’re going to read this poem by Jacob Shores-Argüello that first appeared in Poetry Magazine in June 2023. The poem is written in couplets, or groups of two lines, but because the lines are long they may wrap if you’re reading this on a phone.
Enjoy,
Ællen

The “Change” in Climate Change

My cousin WhatsApps me from Costa Rica, fits the family
into the rectangle of video as they wave from the balcony.

He turns the phone, shows me a swirl of birds in the hurting sky.
But they are not birds. They are neighbor Tinoco’s roof tiles

flying in a storm’s rotary energy. My family is calling because
I’m in Oklahoma, which, to them, is synonym for tornado.

Te amo, I say as my cousin lowers the phone for our grandmother
to hear. She’s scared because she’s lived in the town for 80 years

and can’t recognize all these new skies. Because a year before,
a hurricane reaved its way across this country for the first time

in recorded history. Tornado or torbellino or something else,
I ask her about the valley’s strange wind. And she laughs, says

that she was calling to ask me the same thing. I don’t know why
I keep forgetting the change in climate change. My grandmother

sighs as the sky darkens to the color of rum. Why I still think
that we’ll have names for all the things that will come.

■

Poem-A-Day April 22: a tree inside a tree

From a Window

Incurable and unbelieving
in any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree
rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.
I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get
to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined
or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion
beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.
Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood
exactly as it had and would

(but why should it seem fuller now?)
and though a man’s mind might endow

even a tree with some excess
of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men.
And that is where the joy came in.

■

Happy Earth Day, Friends. “From A Window” appears in poet Christian Wiman’s 2011 collection Every Riven Thing. This poem is written in rhyming couplets.

Poem-A-Day April 22: Ask me if I speak for the nautilus

Hello Friends,
It’s Earth Day, so we’re going to listen to Camille T. Dungy speak for the nautilus today.
<3 ellen

Characteristics of Life

A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
— BBC Nature News

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
          speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
               of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
                    I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.

Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
          one thing today and another tomorrow
     and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.

          I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day.

Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that’s all you know to ask of me.

Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances
     between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
                    I will speak
          the impossible hope of the firefly.

               You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must understand
     such wordless desire.

To say it is mindless is missing the point.

■

Poem-A-Earth-Day April 22: a favorite child of the universe

the earth is a living thing

is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea

is a black hawk circling
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded

is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal

is a black and living thing
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair
feel her brushing it clean

■

“the earth is a living thing” can be found in The Book of Light (1993) by Lucille Clifton.

Track Shoe

Hello Friends,


It's Earth Day, and I'm still in San Francisco, so it seems natural today's poem-a-day should by "Earth Day on the Bay" by Gary Soto.
Enjoy.

Ellen


Earth Day on the Bay
Curled like a genie's lamp,

A track shoe from the 1970s among seaweed,

The race long over, the blue ribbons faded,

The trophies deep in pink insulation in the rafters.

Perhaps the former distant runner sits in his recliner.
The other shoe? Along this shore,

It could have ridden the waves back to Mother Korea,

Where it was molded from plastic,

Fitted with cloth, shoelaces poked through the eyelets,

Squeezed for inspection.
I remember that style of shoe.

Never owned a pair myself.

With my skinny legs I could go side-to-side like a crab,

But never run the distance with a number on my back,

Never the winner or runner up heaving at the end.
I bag that shoe, now litter, and nearly slip on the rocks.

Gulls scream above, a single kite goes crazy,

A cargo ship in the distance carrying more

Of the same.
■

Poem-a-Day April 22: Earth took of earth

Hello Friends —
For Earth Day this year: A poem from the earth to the earth, written in Old English circa 1000, author unknown. For me, the echo of a biblical “dust to dust” in this poem emphasizes the impossibility of clearly delineating a distinction between humans and the planet we inhabit.
Enjoy.
Ellen

Earth Took of Earth

Earth took of earth earth with ill;
Earth other earth gave earth with a will.
Earth laid earth in the earth stock-still:
Then earth in earth had of earth its fill.

***

Erthe Toc of Erthe

Erthe toc of erthe erthe wyth woh,
erthe other erthe to the earthe droh,
erthe leyde erthe in erthene throh,
tho hevede erthe of erthe erthe ynoh.

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2008; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.

Poem-a-Day, April 22: a sound but half its own

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters—with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

This is section I of “Mont Blanc” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1816.

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2008; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010.

Poem-a-Day, April 22: into the presence of still water

Hello Friends,
A sentimental Earth Day poem for you from Wendell Berry —

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2008; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.

Poem-a-Earth-Day, April 22: Long live the weeds

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frownin,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Hello Friends,

Apologies for my neglect to honor the Earth with a poem-a-day yesterday.

Gerard Manley Hopkins would very much appreciate your taking the time to hear “Inversaid” read aloud, and to read it aloud to a friend. For “Long live the weeds,” see also Louise Glück’s “Witchgrass.”

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2008; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.

Poem-a-(earth)day, April 22: footholds, foothills, swollen feet

Eagle Rock

This is the place where darkness gathers like a swarm,
as thick as hide, as soft.
This is where the dead lean like tallgrass,
eyelashes bleached and fluttering,
where the breast-high grass leans into the night.
This is where the skin of Buffalo Berries in the evening,
eveningyellow,
is not so sweet.

It is a place of burnt leaves, of quarrymint, of watercress.
It is a place of narrow footholds, and foothills, of swollen feet,
a place of cattails, gutted white and open.
It is a place of rattlesnake sheddings, like crisp honeycomb,
of ankledeep streams, and cold tongues.
A place where muscle-red pipestone teeth thrust from the earth,
gleam from centuries of Bison fur-rubbings,
and rain.

I am born here, was born here, will always be born here,
and here my hazel opals will ever shut,
and screaming like a wind, my bodyslick will slide, again
into the world.

And here, the moss will suck my cheekbones dry,
and they will flake and fall like lichen,
and I will die here, too.

This is where all my candles have been gathered, lit,
and in the dark are rocking, rock with me
in their arabesque of light.
This is the place where all I have stolen or hidden, I have gathered here.
This is where all of me is gathered.

***

Hi Friends,

“Eagle Rock” was written by Bly Pope and first published anonymously in the spring 2002 issue of my beloved Masque magazine. You can read more from Bly (and check out paintings from both Bly and his twin Rowan) at popebrothersart.com.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.