Thank you to the 136 authors who participated in our HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series and THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series!

Thank you to the 136 authors from 21 countries and 32 U.S. states who contributed their poetry to our HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series and THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series, which ran from October 31, 2021 to March 23, 2022. Many thanks for sharing your ideas, thoughts, feelings, and impressions about the Earth and offering ways to address the climate crisis. As Greta Thunberg tells us, every contribution has an impact. Your work has inspired all of us to keep finding ways to make a difference!

Cynthia Anderson
María Luisa Arroyo
Jaya Avendel
Janet Banks
Sam Barbee
Jenny Bates
Laurel Benjamin
Shelly Blankman
Lavinia Blossom
Rose Mary Boehm
Erina Booker
Jeff Burt
Ranney Campbell
Robin Cantwell
Tricia Marcella Cimera
Clive Collins
Linda Jackson Collins
Judith Comer
Margaret Coombs
Joanne Corey
Joe Cottonwood
Barbara Crooker
Michele Cuomo
Michelle D’costa
Howard Debs
Steven Deutsch
Julie A. Dickson
Lara Dolphin
Anne Walsh Donnelly
Margaret Dornaus
Margaret Duda
Myra Dutton
Barbara Eknoian
Dina Elenbogen
Kimberly Esslinger
Attracta Fahy
Scott Ferry
Yvette Viets Flaten
Laura Foley
S.M. Geiger
Christine Gelineau
Ken Gierke
Jessica Gigot
Matthew Gilbert
Uma Gowrishankar
CR Green
Umar Saleh Gwani
Anita Haas
Tina Hacker
Sheila Hailstone
Penny Harter
Maura High
Sacha Hutchinson
Mathias Jansson
Andrew Jeter
Paul Jones
Euline Joseph
Feroza Jussawalla
Debra Kaufman
James Ross Kelly
Lynne Kemen
Kim Klugh
Tricia Knoll
Judy Kronenfeld
Laurie Kuntz
Tom Lagasse
Jennifer Lagier
Paula J. Lambert
Barbara Harris Leonhard
Joan Leotta
Anita Lerek
j.lewis
Robert Lima
Nancy Lubarsky
Anne Namatsi Lutomia
Marjorie Maddox
Mohini Malhotra
Betsy Mars
Lindsey Martin-Bowen
Elizabeth McCarthy
Mary McCarthy
Susan McClellan
Catfish McDaris
Joan McNerney
Ed Meek
Penelope Moffet
Leah Mueller
Andrew Mulvania
Mish Murphy
Jed Myers
Robbi Nester
Maria Nestorides
Cristina M.R. Norcross
Lynn Norton
Bonface Isaboke Nyamweya
Mary O’Brien
Suzanne O’Connell
Daniel Joseph Paracka, Jr.
Jay Passer
James Penha
Darrell Petska
Barbara Quick
Shirani Rajapakse
Patrick T. Reardon
Jeannie E. Roberts
Alexis Rotella
Ed Ruzicka
Rikki Santer
James Schwartz
Sheikha A.
Ndaba Sibanda
Sharon SingingMoon
Julia Klatt Singer
Ranjith Sivaraman
Julie Standig
Carol A. Stephen
Ann Christine Tabaka
Katrin Talbot
Alarie Tennille
Thomas A. Thrun
Smitha Vishwanath
Julene Waffle
Ann E. Wallace
Alan Walowitz
Donna Weems
Ruth Weinstein
A Garnett Weiss
Dick Westheimer
Kelley White
Lynn White
Kim Whysall-Hammond
Martin Willitts Jr
Liza Wolff-Francis
Jonathan Yungkans
Thomas Zampino
Joanie HF Zosike

PHOTO: The Blue Marble is an image of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the Moon. NASA released the image on December 23, 1972, amid a surge in environmental activism, and the photograph became a symbol of the environmental movement—as a depiction of the Earth’s frailty and vulnerability. Credit: Johnson Space Center of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Vulturine Vespers by Jenny Bates (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Vulturine Vespers
by Jenny Bates

On the third day without power
they came to roost by the house.

They’re here for me, I shivered.

Kept a close eye as they circled,
landed in the yard.

Someone died in the freak storm,
It was not me.

As the Vulture spread its wings
shrouding, hiding the dead

I fell in love with that embrace.

Later that night, and before expected,
the power came back on.

The world had not ended.

I will return, just like the trees
and the birds.

The cold clasp of sound-wind gone,
sunlight and house-bound vibration

sing our evening vespers once again.

Tide of the forest flows forward, the Vulture’s
frosty breath rises sotto voce

Humans don’t own the Earth.

Yet I hope we have a lovely long Summer
together.

PHOTO: Vultures watching the sunset by Val3re.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jenny Bates is a member of Winston-Salem Writers, North Carolina Poetry Society, and North Carolina Writers Network. Her published books include Opening Doors: an equilog of poetry about Donkeys (Lulu Publishing, NC,  2010), Coyote with Coffee (Catbird on the Yadkin Press, NC 2014), Visitations (Hermit Feathers Press, NC 2019), and Slip, her new collection (Hermit Feathers Press, NC 2020).

Encore by Julene Waffle (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Encore
by Julene Waffle

Stretching a path toward far-off hills,
the thunder clouds, like giant snails,
leave their marks on earth.

On the horizon the rain hangs,
silver-gray drapes.
And turkey vultures—

backwoods revival pastors
raise their arms in blessing—
are frozen in horaltic pose,

wing-dry their great fans of feathers
in the top of a bony tree.
Their empty nostrils, catching sky,

eagerly working olfactory bulbs—
do they, too, feel the bliss
of ozone and wet earth?

And when the storm curtain rises at last
and tucks behind the stage of the universe,
the great show of sunset begins

its lacy yellow steps and grand jetés,
red across the sky, its sweeping
orange grand révérence before purple night.

I applaud,
stand,
beg for more.

PHOTO: Turkey Vulture drying wings in tree (Central Massachusetts, Feb. 26, 2011). Photo by Mcvoorhis.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I was inspired to write this poem after a soccer game my sons played in a rain storm. The storm cleared after the game and while we were waiting for the boys to gather their things, I saw these strange shapes in a dead tree across the street from the school. I knew they were birds, big birds, but I didn’t know what kind. I was drawn to them, so I got out of the car with my camera and zoomed in. They were turkey vultures with their wings spread wide to dry. As I returned to the car, the sky broke out in a most lovely sunset. I wanted to capture the retreat of the storm, the vultures, and the setting sun and after a little research on the vultures and ballet, “Encore” was born. I like this one because I think the vulture has a bad reputation when in reality they are a very cool creature.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Julene Waffle, a graduate of Hartwick College and Binghamton University, is a teacher in a rural New York State public school, an entrepreneur, a wife, a mother of three boys, two dogs, three cats, and, of course, she is a writer. Her work has appeared in NCTE’s English Journal, La Presa, The Non-Conformist, and Mslexia, among others. She was also published in the anthologies American Writers Review 2021: Turmoil and Recovery and Seeing Things (2020), and her chapbook So I Will Remember was published in 2020. Visit her at wafflepoetry.com.

Warblers, Ibis, Sparrows, Bittern, Kingfishers by Ed Ruzicka (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Warblers, Ibis, Sparrows, Bittern, Kingfishers
by Ed Ruzicka

Even swaddled, Baby Henry wriggles
as if a worm works inside him.
He spits up onto cotton draped
over my daughter’s shoulder.

I call Baby Henry “Killer” because
my daughter is one of the new-minted
Fatima’s whose eyes flash above masks
as she whisks into patient’s rooms,
attends them bedside, orders new meds.

Martin, her husband, is even more at risk
in the ICU where he has to force tubes
down sedated throats so a machine
can fill failed lungs. Both carry
the hospital home to wee bean Henry.
Neither lets us within ten feet of our little pip.
No telling what might have found its way
into the frail birdcage of his ribs.

Renee and I stand on the lawn.
The three of them stay by the door.
Martin shows us what they call “Superman.”
Martin puts Baby Henry tummy down
over his shoulder. Sleepy Henry stretches
halfway straight, maybe too dangerously close
to an unseen load of Kryptonite.

The next weekend we take the canoe out.
Oars on knees, wind nudges us under
cypress branches luminous as lettuce.
A yellow bibbed bird lights, fluffs
six feet above Renee’s shoulder. Maybe
a vireo, maybe a warbler? Let’s go with vireo.
Back out in the lake we drift through dozens
of birdcalls, each an illegible signature
with its own set of runs, quavers, fades.

I barely know a handful. Maybe I’ll
recognize more by the time I get young Henry
into a boat, row him around, teach him to keen
into the silence behind all the birdsongs
that will have gone extinct before he
learns to tune his own ears up.

PHOTO: Philadelphia vireo. Photo by Patrice Bouchard on Unsplash.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem moves from the early Covid period to the amphitheater of a nearby lake where birds still thrive. Every year now I listen deeper and deeper into our mornings and try to hear just a few shrill notes from the bushes. We used to have so many birds that crossed over or stayed in our yard and neighborhood. Now though the city has learned better how to quash the mosquito population, though ants choke to death on pesticides in underground chambers and hallways, though the lawns are lush with chemical nutrients and weed killers, the birds are few and are dwindling.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ed Ruzicka’s most recent book of poems, My Life in Cars, was released a year ago. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Rattle, Canary, the Xavier Review and the San Pedro River Review, as well as many other literary journals and anthologies. A finalist for the Dana Award and the New Millennium Award, Ed is an Occupational Therapist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he lives with wife, Renee.

PHOTO: The author on a lake near his home in Louisiana. 

Elegy for My Trees by Feroza Jussawalla (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Elegy for My Trees
by Feroza Jussawalla

The weather is turning;
not, as it usually does,
when liquid gold
comes and goes,
dripping from amber branches
that shed their emerald ear drops.

This year there is no crunch
to the gold dried to airy thinness.
It is soggy damp. Slippery and sliding,
causing falls.

The skies have been weeping,
Filling the ever-overflowing rain barrels.

The continuous damp chill,
has wilted my Afghan pines
traumatized by the drought
in and around me, unready for this
bounty of water.

Many years of dry drought
have not prepared, desert sand or bark,
to absorb
what should be a gift of rain.

Instead, damp bark leeches water
releasing pine beetles, for
busy woodpecker heads to
peck, peck, peck,
tap, tap, tap.

It is a wonder their little heads don’t
fall off,
similarly making them fodder
for the lone hawk that sits
on his dying throne
a throne that I must soon have felled
before it tumbles and crumbles.

No, this water has not been a blessing,
as it breaks the banks of rivers
used to dry edges:
“This is how we were meant to be,” they say,
“to be streams in a desert,
For, when we are full and flush,
greedy gold diggers, mistaken mine cleaners,
break veins, that loose
poison into our life blood.”

Petrichor turns to putrifaction,
as drowning roots, lose loose soil
threatening to topple
stately majestics that must be felled
before canyon winds blow them over.

No, we have abused mother earth too long,
and now she lets loose wind and weather,
tides that bring in the amakua, as sharks
that bite children by the seaside.
This niño does not bring a blessing,

Santo Niño, can you save us with your rebirth?

PHOTO: New Mexico storm (Sept. 30, 2017). Photo by John Fowler on Unsplash.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is an elegy for MY eight big Afghan pines that had to be felled, a couple years ago, in 2015, when our desert environment received and excess of rain. In 2015, the gold King mine waste water spilled into our rivers, in the one year that we had an excess of rain and the rivers were full. Thus, the water could not be used.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Feroza Jussawalla, is Professor Emerita, of English, at the University of New Mexico, Albuqueruque. She has taught for forty plus years and published several works of criticism on Postcolonial Literatures. Her collection of poetry, Chiffon Saris, was published by Toronto South Asian Review Press and The Writer’s Workshop, Kolkotta (2002).

The Lilac Bushes and the Forest-Tent Caterpillars by Martin Willitts Jr (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

The Lilac Bushes and the Forest-Tent Caterpillars
by Martin Willitts Jr

Lilacs grew on our boundary.
My window opened to a whiffed aroma of lilacs.
Light-purple light would wake me.

There was a thin spider-web nest of caterpillars.
In the weight of their nest squirmed black larvae,
begging for mercy. The larvae moved together single file.
Silken treads were laid down by leaders.
They knew they were going places
and they were destroying things in the way.
Buff-colored moths emerged about 10 days later.
They searched the solitude of streetlights.
The neighbors tried smoking the nest to kill it.

I could hear the caterpillars dying.

Everything is a by-product of disagreement.
Everything that was is gone.
Everything that will be is not possible anymore.

And in the end, nothing survived.
The neighbors passed on.
My father turned purple as a lilac, and died.
There are no more moths hovering on streetlights.
There are no lilacs neighborhoods.
There is nothing left to argue about.
Some army follows a blue line over boundaries.
Some moon is disjointed in the darkness of larvae.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem will appear in my next full-length collection, Not Only Are the Extraordinary Entering the Dream World (Flowstone Books, 2022).

PHOTO: Lilacs, lighting, and lens flare by MattysFlicks (2014).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Martin Willitts Jr, edits the Comstock Review and judges the New York State Fair Poetry Contest. His work has been nominated for 17 Pushcart and 13 Best of the Net awards. His awards include: Winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, 2016; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; and Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2020. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award winner The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections, including Blue Light Award winner The Temporary World. His most recent book is Harvest Time (Deerbrook Editions, 2021). Find him on Instagram and Facebook.

Transformation by Sheila Hailstone (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Transformation
by Sheila Hailstone

The drum of the realization of the promise is beating.
We are sweeping the road to the sky.
Your joy is here today. What remains for tomorrow?
                            Rumi, translated by R.A. Nicolson

The Earth’s tectonic plates collided,
thrusting upwards
and crinkled this land like a potato chip.
Born from the ring of fire,
volcanoes vomited lava.
Molten magma overheated,
oozing over the landscape.
Pustulant boils remained.
The drum of the realization
of the promise is beating.

The ground rose up from the sea.
Mountains formed, capped in ice.
Rain forests covered the earth
and drew sweet, clear, water
from the depths.
Birds flew and lost their wings
and foraged on land for *kai.
The children born in the safe cocoon
of sky and earth prised open
Papa and Rangi—breaking the tie,
sweeping the road to the sky.

Now I live upon this land as if it is forever,
while the sea rises, as the glaciers melt.
I denude the trees, scrape the ocean beds,
I exploit the wild lizard rivers.
I feed out palm kernels
I pour chemicals on the land
to help grasses grow,
to make milk to sell,
to buy cars and aeroplanes.
I poison the bees with Neonicotinoids
without sorrow.
This, my Joy is here today, but
what remains for tomorrow?

FOOTNOTES:
*Kai – food in Te Reo Maori.
*Papatūānuku ( Earth Mother) Ranginui ( Sky father).

PHOTO: Milford Sound, New Zealand. Photo by Jasper van der Meij on Unsplash.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: From Aotearoa (New Zealand), Sheila Hailstone sends poetry out into the world. In 2020, her work Waiting for an avalanche when you live by the sea, was awarded first prize in NZ Micro Flash Lockdown competition. She is the author of children’s stories and a memoir, Dancing Around Cancer. Visit her at cancer-cancan.com.

Sprinklers Underground by Tina Hacker (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Sprinklers Underground
by Tina Hacker

Previously published in The Fib Review (June 20).

Photo by kim giseok on Unsplash

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a Fibonacci poem, a form that gives me a sense of freedom. The pattern of words opens up a world of ideas that both follow the word count and work as a poem.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tina Hacker is happy to announce that 33 golems have joined the literary community in her book titled GOLEMS, released by Kelsay Books in June 2021. Hacker’s poems about these magical creatures from Jewish folklore were first published and, because of their popularity, then serialized in the online journal Quantum Fairy Tales. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies. And a golem added that her other poetry collections are Listening to Night Whistles (Aldrich Press) and Cutting It (The Lives You Touch Publications). GOLEMS is available on Amazon.

Apopka Wildlife Drive by Michele Cuomo (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Apopka Wildlife Drive
by Michele Cuomo

The farmers slowly murdered the Lake
The ploughs spun soil in alligator death rolls
draining the swamps while salting poison.
The Lake let go, and the wood storks and the pelicans
were collateral damage. No charges were filed.
The land began to sink back under water
but there were no short sales. Abandoned
left like a cancer patient who goes to chemo
alone, and must wait long in the hallways before
she has the strength to shuffle to the bus stop.
She died, was buried and rose again.
She has been reclaimed, and over the burnt sticks
like old bones, the anhinga provides benedictions,
the water lilies lace the edges of the drowned fields.
the great blue heron trots across the bridges
with outstretched wings and tentative steps.
The small alligator bobs his Brancusi head.
The bobcats stretch and loll at the edges
with fat cat Cheshire satisfaction
and all the birds chatter and gloat at us
We’re here. We’re here. We’re here. We’re here.

@MicheleCuomo2021

PHOTO: Tricolored Heron, Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive by OHFalcon72 (January 21, 2022).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I took a drive on the Apopka Wildlife Drive last year. The land is slowly being healed. The birds rejoice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michele Cuomo lives in Winter Springs, Florida. Her poems have been published by Raven’s Perch, Prolific Press, and the Bard’s Initiative. 

She Who Knits in the Buddhist Monastery by Tricia Knoll (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

She Who Knits in the Buddhist Monastery
by Tricia Knoll

Her bare toes nudge the barn floor
from her caned rocking chair.
Her fingers knit stripes, cables
of mantle and crust, riffs of watersheds
running down to ruffled-water blue binding.
Ribbed fabric slumps around her knotted calves
like lazy Vermont mountains.
I pass near her. I hear a hawk. A gong.
I respect silence. I did not come for preaching.

Rock and knit. Patience
stitch by stitch, inch by inch,
she binds up guardian green.

I am one apprentice, come to find my call
in hoe and loam, heirloom seed and pollen.
Others move beside me—basket weavers,
windmill makers, moss minders, modelers of fault zones,
river tenders, ocean keepers, and selvage menders.

Her needles slish against each other.
She tilts her head at my glass of cold water,
crosses the needles in her left hand,
and reaches with her right. I offer
my sweated glass, see a lifeline
on her palm.

First published in Peacock Journal.

PAINTING: Knitting Girl by Giovanni Segantini (1888).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is a tribute to women in the environmental movement who have meant to much to me as role models for the kind of work I’ve done removing invasive species in forest habitat. In addition to Greta, Terry Tempest Williams is one of those women. In the poem, one mythic woman, the teacher, is doing the knitting as an example of how to heal the world one stitch at a time. Knitting is an act of pulling together something almost out of nothing. In this case, the fabric she is making is a healing of earth, a metaphorical remaking of planet. Note what is coming off her needles: guardian green, riffs of watersheds, crust and mantle, the ribbed fabric of mountains. Her apprentices have come to learn. To tend rivers, keep oceans, mend selvages. She does not preach; she shows by example. That is why I pay homage to the women in the environmental movement who are working so hard on this healing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet with strong leanings to collections of eco-poetry: Urban Wild (Finishing Line Press) highlights relationships between humans and wildlife in urban habitat; Ocean’s Laughter (Kelsay Books) looks at change over time in Manzanita, Oregon; Broadfork Farm (The Poetry Box) salutes creatures and people on a small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington. Coming out in early 2023 from Future Cycle Press, One Bent Twig is a series of poems about trees, deforestration, and hugging trees. Visit her at triciaknoll.com.