Instituto Terra by Barbara Leonhard (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Instituto Terra
by Barbara Leonhard

“Nature is the earth and it is other beings and if we don’t have some kind of spiritual return to our planet, I fear that we will be compromised.” Sebastião Salgado

All of nature, our neighbors.
Our yard, prolific with dandelions, plantain,
clover, violets. Even the unnamed white blossoms
embellishing the lawn each spring, allowed their display.
Our tall grasses trimming the yard
call in the fireflies. Butterfly gardens close by bloom
& groom Monarchs. Life forming. Transforming.
Flying free.

Our organic garden,
shared with a box turtle, birds,
deer, rabbits. A host
to our neighbor’s bees.
Our summer bounty, their honey.
The moles do their job, aerate the soil.
Possums eat the ticks. Bats & swifts, the pesky
mosquitoes. Coons, the small rodents
& wasp larvae. Balance, maintained
with reciprocity.

The ants swarming the kitchen each spring.
Tolerated. Our patio, a diner for doves,
cardinals, wrens. The fence, a highway
for squirrels & coons.
No need to fill tree hollows with Styrofoam.
The trees welcome guests. No need to trap
& release. We simply closed off the chimney.
Secured the trash barrel lid. Loving the furry
& the winged, the big & the small, our passion.

We don’t clear our land, uprooting the natives,
preening the view of our estate.
Management, a false sense of control.
Ivy sneaks through fence slats
across the stone patio floor
up the sides of the house.
A discarded pot of old dirt
sustains an oak sapling.
Gaia rebounds. Reclaims her grounds.

The cellular connection
between us and Gaia
doesn’t elude us. We don’t spray with pesticides
for the perfect lawn. Douse our garden
with toxic compounds to ward off insects,
increase yield.

We are Gaia. She, us.
What she eats, we eat.
We pollute her cells, we poison
our own. Contaminants seep deep into her soul
& our graves.

Her healing is our life.

PAINTING: Deer in the Forest by Franz Marc (1913).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The story of the Brazilian couple who regrew a forest from arid land inspires me because it shows how the depth of their love for earth healed the depleted soil and themselves. Although I have never regrown a forest, my husband and I live in peace with spiders, coons, slugs, and squirrels. We coexist with Mother Nature, feeding her birds and keeping poisons off our lawn and garden plants. We understand the balance of nature and cooperate with all living things because we realize that we are all connected. Disruption of our biological connections to all living things creates imbalance and illness, not just for Mother Earth but also for us. If the damage is reciprocal, so too is the healing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Leonhard’s work is published in Spillwords, Anti-Heroin Chic, Free Verse Revolution, October Hill Magazine, Vita Brevis, Silver Birch Press, Amethyst Review, among others. This year Barbara earned both third place and honorary mention for two poems in Well Versed 2021. She is currently marketing her first poetry collection about her relationship with her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. From that memoir collection, her poem “Cooking a Life with a Wire Spine” was nominated for Publication of the Month on Spillwords in August 2021, and Barbara was voted Spillword’s Author of the Month in October. You can keep up with her journey on her blog site, extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog. Her poetry podcast, “Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul”. can be found at meelosmom.podbean.com.