Mourning Song for the Earth by Marjorie Maddox (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Mourning Song for the Earth
by Marjorie Maddox

Here the stone heart
waits for the tug of tide,

the undertow of pull,
the grainy tabula rasa of mind

lapped clean of conscience.
Or not. Even now,

seaweeds entwine; brittle
entanglements rot in the sun.

The dying snare the dead.
Such rocky shores.

Each dawn, the gulls caw
their crescendo of shriek,

capsized days breaking
into dirge, the cracked

and soulful as lonely
as this sad ballad of loss,

swooping low then rising
in morning’s daily aubade of hope.

Such deceptive beauty:
elegy for the earth.

Previously published in Masque & Spectacle and in Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts Publishing 2022).

Photo by Karen Elias.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Winner of America Magazine’s 2019 Foley Poetr­­­­­y Prize and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); True, False, None of the Above (Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); four children’s and YA books—including  Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Readiing Poems with Insider Exercises and A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry, Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems , I’m Feeling Blue, Too! (2021 NCTE Notable Poetry Book)—Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence (assistant editor); and 650+ stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Forthcoming in 2022 are her books Begin with a Question (Paraclete Press), as well as her ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias, Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts, 2021). Find more of her work at marjoriemaddox.com.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER: After teaching college English for forty years, Karen Elias is now an artist/activist, using photography to record the fragility of the natural world and raise awareness about climate change. Her work is in private collections, has been exhibited in several galleries, and has won numerous awards. She is a board member of the Clinton County Arts Council, where she serves as membership chair and curator of the annual juried photography exhibit.

ABOUT THE POET AND PHOTOGRAPHER: Karen Elias and Marjorie Maddox are engaged in an exciting, mutually inspiring project, combining poetry and photography in creative collaboration. Their work has been exhibited at The Station Gallery (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania). Additional collaborations have appeared in such literary, arts, or medical humanities journals as About Place: Works of Resistance and Resilience, Cold Mountain Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Other Journal, Glint, Masque & Spectacle, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, and Ars Medica.

PHOTO: Author Marjorie Maddox (left) and photographer Karen Elias (right).