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).

Listen to the Youth by Elizabeth McCarthy (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Listen to the Youth
by Elizabeth McCarthy

In Glasgow, Scotland
            the powerful discuss
recovery as the patient orbits the sun,
            its temperature rising
                        at every turn

as if Paris was enough to stop the burn

“empty promises — 30 years of blah, blah, blah”
                        will not cure what has been done

in time for children to live their lives
            on earth of green. Where freedom
                        ends in fires and floods, as futures
            wash away in the silty mud of greed.

Be the change you wish to see,
            each day the sun will rise and shine,
health is there in the light of day
            if we give up our fuel burning ways.

Silence the days of old, where gray haired
croakers prescribe greenwash on the windows of reality.

Listen to youth who march for truth.

*quotes are from Greta Thunberg, leader of the global movement to save our planet.

PHOTO: Greta Thunberg at the European Parliament on March 4, 2020.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I think one first has to recognize the diagnosis and prognosis for our planet before one can determine a treatment,  “How to Heal the Earth.” So, in this poem, I attempted to begin with where we are before addressing a prescription for health, which as suggested is in each of our hands as well as listening to those who speak the truth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth McCarthy lives with her husband in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont, where they raised two children, several generations of free roaming hens, and made numerous attempts at keeping honey bees alive through cold winters and marauding bears. In 2018, she retired from teaching and turned to poetry in March 2020 when Covid closed down the world and time became a windfall.

Earth Speaks: An Oratorio by Joanie HF Zosike (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Earth Speaks: An Oratorio
by Joanie HF Zosike

1. Recitativo—Earth

“Our last chance to tackle the climate catastrophe.”
Ugh.
“How to heal the earth.”
Argh.
“Our fight for the planet.”
Grrrr.
Expressions like these curdle my molten lava.
They make me want to smash my surface with a mallet!
Instead of wreaking havoc, I sing:

2. Chorus of Fig Trees and Farmers

She fell in love with her
landlord Sam, a generous man.
They were agrarian lovers
who worked on the land.

Fig tree gave the woman
a root and branch of itself.
She dropped seeds in the ground.
Her patch of earth grew to sky.

It grew fiercer, too.
how its green fig eye spread
greater than a mountain.
Woman held her head high.

Fig twitched its leaves and
shook-shaukelt-secoué
Shekere shekere IH! IH!
Ritual dance pounded Earth.

Well! Earth is in no mood
for bucolic solutions.
She doesn’t approve of naïve
resolutions. She needs more.

Earth seeks a new directive.
She’s maintaining her orbit
but must gain cooperation from
those who have injured her.

3. Duet: Earth and Human

EARTH: What makes you think you can save me?
HUMAN: I was born from the dust of your dust.
                I will prove that in me you can trust.
EARTH: What gives you this terrible power?
HUMAN: I’m your owner, your tamer, your plougher.
EARTH: You’ve never owned me and you never will.
HUMAN: What if I take you to dinner, pay the bill?
EARTH: All right, enough with the rhyming!
                We have to get down to the real nitty-gritty.
                You keep talking about a fight for “the planet.”
                Meaning me. Must it always be a fight?
HUMAN: That’s right, I can’t abandon you after I’ve done you such harm.
                And I swear, I did so out of innocence.
                I never meant to hurt you.
                I just didn’t know.
EARTH: So you’re saying you were ignorant?
HUMAN: Just like Eve fell prey to the snake’s manipulation,
                I fell under the spell of my own self-adulation.
EARTH: There you go, rhyming again. The editor specifically said…
HUMAN: Sorry, I have to reread the guidelines.
                What I mean to say is, I owe you a good old-fashioned healing.
EARTH: Get your grimy hands off me, infant.
                You think the only way to accomplish anything is by force.
                I’ve lost patience with your battle cries and wars!
HUMAN: Don’t go all semantic on me, Ma.
EARTH: It’s not just wrong words, you think wrong thoughts.
                Perhaps you should ask ME what I need.
HUMAN: Okay, what do you need?

4. Earth Aria

EARTH: Sprinkle me gently.
                Don’t grizzle my grit so that soil drains down the hillsides
                You are so sloppy, child, throwing your trash this way and that.
                You’ve burned away the ozone so you can’t go out without a                 hat.
                You’ve charred the forests and mountainsides, disgraced every                 place
                you’ve trod across the land in your mania to leave your mark.
                You’ve suckled the blood from my rivers, my streams.
                Cast your plastics, spit my oil into the ocean’s crust
                Put a flag on the moon! Good grief!
                I ask you now to press your face into mine.
                Sing to me ancient songs. Place your ear to the ground,
                hear the whispers from the bedchambers of my bowels.
                I’m built like a brick house, organic and mineral.
                Trees are my bones, don’t break them.
                We’re made of the same stuff—I’m just a little more round.

5. Glorious Hallelujah!

HUMAN: And bigger.
EARTH:  And don’t you forget it!
HUMAN: Are you saying I’m star stuff, too?
EARTH:  More than you know.
HUMAN: Is my human body—
EARTH: The same as my celestial body.
HUMAN: I’ve always dreamt that I could talk with you, Mother Earth.
EARTH: I’ve dreamed about that too, honey.
                Yearned for the chance to make myself clear to you.
                Too bad I had to shout to get your attention.
HUMAN: You are kind of scary these days.
EARTH: I’ve always been scary. But I’m always benign.
HUMAN: Can I learn to think like a celestial body?
EARTH: Perhaps. If you really try.
HUMAN: I must fly away to distance stars to save the human race!
EARTH: What, to terraform and make the same mistakes all over again?
                You’re just not a one-trial learner, are you?
HUMAN: I guess not. But how do I learn to fix—tackle—heal—fight—
                I’m confused.
EARTH: No kidding.
                Follow your instincts, child, that’s all.
                Learn from the seasons and tides.
                They are my children, too. They’ll be looking out for you.
                There’s no need for apprehension.
                Did I forget to mention, we can stage an intervention together.
BOTH:    Glorious, glorious Hallelujah!
CHORUS: Glorious, glorious HEAVE-HO!
EARTH:  I don’t want you to leave so try not to heave
                and I urge you to think when you hoe!
TUTTI: Glorious, glorious Hallelujah!
             Arboreous glorious Hallelujah!
             Victorious synergy, Hallelujah!
             Green is the color of love!

PAINTING: Spring by Harmonia Rosales (2018).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The first thing I thought about when I saw the subject for this Silver Birch series was:

“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn and
Tied her with fences and dragged her down.”
—The Doors, “When the Music’s Over”

I thought back to my solo theatre work written in the early 90s, All Right, So I AM the Earth! and realized this theme has been with me a long time. Then I remembered that with others of my generation, I screamed as if wounded about an imminent catastrophe since the late 60s. Flash forward to 2022. The catastrophe is here. The repercussions of war and injury done to the ecosystem are intrinsically related. It will take imagination, vision, resistance, and strategies we have yet to imagine to overcome what our careless treatment of life on earth and in the oceans has wrought. We are all responsible to a degree, so the best thing we as individuals can do is: educate ourselves, reduce our carbon footprint, and don’t forget how to dance, sing, and love. And, if all else fails, write an oratorio.

PHOTO: Joanie Fritz Zosike in All Right, So I AM the Earth!, solo theatre work written, composed, and performed by JHFZ, directed by Stephanie JT Russell, photo by Jeanne Liotta.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joanie HF Zosike is the 2019 Writer’s Hotel Sara Patton poetry stipend recipient. Her upcoming work includes Jambu Press’s Light on the Walls of Life, an anthology dedicated to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Her chapbooks are Character Poems (Chez Chez) and Bliss, Not Weight, (Ides Anthology of Chapbooks, Silver Birch Press). Her poetry has been featured in a ranged of publications, including Alien Buddha, Home Planet News, Levure Literraire, Maintenant, Syndic, and The New Guard: Boom!  “Compassion,” a short story, appeared in Have a NYC 3 (Three Rooms Press). Joanie received an Albee fellowship for her play Inside produced at American Actors Theatre, a NYSCA regrant for 12 Steps to Murder produced at The New Theater, and Foundation for Jewish Culture grant for And Then the Heavens Closed, produced at The Jewish Museum (all in NYC).

Good Clean Dirt for My Grandsons by Thomas A. Thrun (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Good Clean Dirt for My Grandsons
by Thomas A. Thrun

What do I tell them, my two young grandsons, in 2021?
How do I explain, simply, the importance of good clean dirt
and its role in healing our earth and slowing the warming?

The oldest reminds me he’s almost seven! His brother
proclaims, I’m five and a half! Tucking them in, I paraphrase
Tennessee Ernie Ford: God bless your pea-picking hearts!

I dim their room’s lights. I sigh to myself, almost cry, for I
am a Baby Boomer, born of parents of The Greatest Generation,
per former NBC News Anchor Tom Brokaw’s book of 1998.

Pa and Ma farmed 80 acres in southern Wisconsin (1944-1990).
They’d each grown up with almost nothing in The Depression,
courted during WWII and raised us kids with cows and chickens.

Tobacco was our main cash crop, the one that paid the taxes
and helped all us get through college. Pa said, You kids don’t need
to wash your hands to eat lunch out here. It’s just good clean dirt!

Our farm basically was Sustainable long before the term
was fashionable. Pa did not like chemicals, but did use 2,4-D
to keep the thistles and nettles from shorting out the pasture fence.

Pa cultivated between tobacco rows with one horse, and we all
followed with our hoes, working out the weed sprouts between plants.
Come harvest, few weeds were left to damage the precious leaves.

The grandboys and I now play farm in our condo basement
with my 1950s vintage rubber cows, toy tractors, and implements.
I’ve built replicas of our 1900 barn, wood silo, and other buildings.

I’ve modpodged family photos to the undersides of hinged roofs
with captions detailing the care of livestock and the land itself.
And I talk about all this as we play, hoping dearly some sinks in.

For now (and if for some reason I am not around to witness
their becoming young men), this poem will have to do. Along
with others and the 125-page/400-photo memoir I’ve penned.

I want them to get good clean dirt stuck under their fingernails.
I want then to appreciate our Wisconsin conservation heritage and
have my copy of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.

I want to tell them about former Gov. Gaylord Nelson. About
my picking up road litter and a very warm bottle of Blatz beer with
two friends, high school girls, on the very first Earth Day in 1970.

If nothing else, I want Ben and Miles to be Conservation Voters.
They do not know yet, but it’s already in their blood. I want them
to learn of Glasgow, where earth’s healing begins . . . again.

And, if only for a day, both sometime should eat lunch in a field,
with hands stained in harvest of organic food for others. I want them
to understand land ethics. To heal the earth, each in his own way.

PHOTO: Marinette County, Wisconsin, farm by Milo Mingo.

NOTE1 FROM THE AUTHOR: Raised as a Badger State farm boy, the land always has been important to me. I am the son of a second-generation Wisconsin farmer. Growing up in the 1960s, my father often impressed upon us how fortunate my sisters and I were to have electricity, refrigeration, TV, and indoor, running water . . . among many other things. My father and his brothers all were born before WWI and knew the meaning of real hard work. They were tied close to the land, and often exchanged labor with other neighboring farmers and relatives. We used mostly hand tools, hoes instead of herbicides as much as possible. Labor from us, his children, was free and expected. Pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals were expensive.

PHOTO: Poet Tom Thrun and his twin sister, Nancy, about 1959, on their work horse. Older sister, Ruthie, holds the single-row tobacco cultivator.

NOTE2 FROM THE AUTHOR: It is important t me that my children and grandboys know about all this, especially living here in this state with its rich (though now threatened) conservation heritage and ethics . . . as important as breathing, home cooking, poetry, charity, Country and Classical Music, and the sense of community. I now understand how my own father grew to hate pickled fish. I took an interest in writing early on, and my older sister gave me a paperback of Robert Frost’s Complete Poems when I was 13. The rest is poetic history.

PHOTO: Poet Tom Thrun has countless hours recreating his family farm for his children and two grandboys. His model features toy animals, toy tractors, other machinery from the 1950s and 60s, as well as arn, pig house, hen house, outhouse, tobacco shed, granary, and other structures. He has attached photos, some going back 100 years, to the undersides of the roofs. Thrun also has written a 100-plus-page Thrun Farm Family Memoir with over 400 photos. Through the model and book, he has captured the essence of an early-to-mid-20th-Century Wisconsin farm.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas A. Thrun, retired in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, is an English/Journalism graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He edited weekly newspapers both in Wisconsin and Washington State, among other varied career choices. Thrun cites his Wisconsin farming heritage and love for Robert Frost’s poetry among top influences of his own poetic work. He has been published in his retirement both in Wisconsin and other national online anthologies. He is included among the poets whose poems on “Words” have been selected for the upcoming 2022 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar.  Thrun and his wife have two grown children and two grandsons.  Thrun and his wife have two grown children and two grandsons.

Catacombs by Umar Saleh Gwani (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Catacombs
by Umar Saleh Gwani

We hunted and gathered
domesticating with ease,
we conquered

We tied leashes, halters,
often some fine ornaments
at altars built in celebrating
our might

Intelligent life sounds more
like advancement in running
like software to nowhere,
while mother sleeps

What if she’s nursing fatigue,
wounds from tons of emissions,
ego defined, war here,
battle there?

Let the earth heal and humans
learn to coexist and clean up,
so mother’s torn ligaments
can grow back strong.

PAINTING: Red Sun by Arthur Dove (1935).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem attempts to highlight Man’s abilities to conquer his terrain and overpower other creatures but how humans have been neglectful about sustaining the environment by cutting down, emissions, and other harmful practices leading to climate change. We are orphans once this earth dies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Umar Saleh Gwani is an Information & Communications Technology consultant based in Bauchi, Nigeria. His hobbies include poetry, digital photography, and outdoor sports. He is the author of Thunderclap (ISBN: 978-978-56200-4-7), a poetry collection published by AMAB Books Nigeria, and his poems have been featured by online publishers such as Konya Shams Rumi and Praxis online Magazine.  He is married with children.

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. 

After the burning the forest returns by Kelley White (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

After the burning
the forest returns
by Kelley White

—for Dr. Al Shigo, May 8, 1930-October 6, 2006

“Trees as a group are intelligent. Intelligence
means the ability to connect information
in ways that assure survival.”

past seared hemlock, split beach, scarred maple,
I am waiting by the damp places for the thick amazement
of berries, brave through the squalling mosquito clouds,
the tearing tartness of red, raspberry, thick confusion, of black,
berry, hard ticking of grasshopper and bee as the sun climbs
noon through new green aspen saplings, moose
maple, stinkwood, black birch cotyledons, choke
cherry, ash, —pushing two-leaved through low growth—
creepers, princess pine, ground pine, mosses, whip fork
and broom, powder gun, hairy cap, succulent snow-
berry, wintergreen, fierce climbing snapdragon,
thrust through fecund droppings, bear, moose, deer
sign, rabbit scat, new green touch-me-not, honeysuckle,
wild grape, strangling bittersweet, and your own, your fungi,
destroying angel, puff ball, witch’s butter, morel,
staghorn, in scrub brush, sumac, elderberry, in liminal
cattail, pussy willow, prickly wild rose; white light
on the ledges, the granite mountain, past tree line,
hot crow call on sun-burned shoulder, cracked paper
birch, wind-burned pine in the place of eagles,
pail thump of rock blueberries in lichen dry desert
(lush moss-worlds after rain,) checkerberries, trillium, Indian
pipe, ladyslipper, one shaft of sunlight, and dark
owl-pellet damp, cool waterfall thrush; trees may not heal,
but the forest does, seeks fingerling strawberries
in low burning grass, sand tunneling bee hiss, skitter
ant, quick knee prickle through juniper sharp branches—
read the runes, beetle-track beneath bark, dragonflies
in coupled flight, ballooning spiders, sugar maples scarred
by drunk sapsuckers, and ashes, noon hot bird sky, you, rising
ash, smoke, pollen, snake in hawkgrasp, seed, falling—my
startled hand seizing all, red tipped and eager, pushing
into the heart of brambles, transfixed by thorns—
almost worth the fire, the blackened stumps

PAINTING: Fires in the Forest by Laszlo Mednyanszky (1910).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Renowned plant pathologist Alex Shigo lived across the street from me as I was growing up in a small New Hampshire town during the 1960s. I remember many hikes with Dr. Shigo and my best friend, his daughter Judy, and learned much about insect life and fungi and something about the many layers of life in a forest. (To quote his story in Wikipedia, he was “a biologist, plant pathologist with the United States Forest Service whose studies of tree decay resulted in many improvements to standard arboricultural practices.”) Judy now oversees his archives and handles requests for his publications, including Modern Arboriculture—Touch Trees. I was very excited to hear him quoted a few years ago in a workshop I attended in Philadelphia about tending “urban trees.” His work, and my remembrance of his teaching, give me some hope for our multi-species planet, even for one of his special areas of expertise, the lowly yet vital fungi. (Let me mention here a book he guided me to: Lucy Kavaler’s 1965 Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles, as fascinating now as when I read it in fourth grade.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA. Her most recent collection is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine.

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.

Poppy by Attracta Fahy (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Poppy
by Attracta Fahy

There she was with her ovary nose
all in a blush when I opened the door.
Her pupils splashed on tissue pink
petals, gushing under a star

stigma, lemon and lime carpels
exposed to the sun, precariously
ready to scatter her young.

One ivory, silvery leg rooted in a crack
on the pavement, the smokey scent of seed
in the breeze. Her leaf skirt in a swirl,

arms, two shoots raised into the air,
hands, two heads in a swoon, ready to burst
into bloom.

Like my daughter, how could I not love her?
Oh, the things I told her

PHOTO: Poppy (Galway, Ireland) by Attracta Fahy.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Sometimes it’s overwhelming to witness what’s happening in the world in terms of not just climate change, but humanity itself. It is very hard to experience the helplessness one feels at the enormity of difficulties. The question of how to make necessary changes to heal ourselves, and our planet can feel too big, but I’ve learned that to keep focused on what I can do, regardless of how small it may seem, lifts me out of the fear and sadness. ¶ I live in the countryside and have a half-acre garden, which I have maintained for over 26 years. I never use chemicals, which means there is much more labour, but the reward is that my conscience is clear and I feel good. I have a huge compost heap at the end of my garden, which I call bug hotel, so much is happening there in terms of ecology. The trees and hedgerow I nurtured from when I came here have matured, and there is an abundance of wildflowers, hybrids, herbs, fruit, and always something new. I love to see natural habitat, hares, rabbits, frogs, and a variety of birds visit here. Every year it is the same and different. I live my life according to its rhythm, and know almost to the day when a flower or shrub will appear and when migrating birds will arrive. ¶ For me, much of the issue in terms of our self-destruction seems to be a deep-rooted fear of the feminine, the soul, and the anima mundi. When I saw the submission call on “How to Heal the Earth,” I thought of the morning I went out the back door of my house and saw a beautiful pink poppy looking up at me from the pavement. What I saw was a little fairy girl bringing blessings. Of course I knew her name was Poppy. This is how nature communicates: to our intuition. I felt a very deep love for her. This is how we heal the earth. Love of all things, but start with one. What returns is immense. Then I wrote this poem.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Attracta Fahy is a Psychotherapist living in Galway, Ireland. She is the Winner of the 2021 Trócaire Poetry Ireland Poetry Competition. Her work has been published in Irish Times, New Irish Writing 2019, and many other publications at home and abroad. A Pushcart and Best of Net nominee, she was shortlisted for the OTE 2018 New Writer, Allingham Poetry competition (2019 and 2020), Write By The Sea Writing Competition (2021), and Dedalus Press Mentoring Programme (2021). In March 2020, Fly on the Wall Poetry published her bestselling debut chapbook collection, Dinner in the Fields. Visit her on Facebook and Twitter.

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.