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).

Sea Change by Robin Cantwell (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Sea Change
by Robin Cantwell

I turn off my phone,
tune out the news,
adjust my eyes
to three dimensions
to memory
to the shapes and sounds of life
a life beyond a touchscreen’s glare
a life that no longer needs data
data that breeds anxiety
anxiety that leads to response
response measured
in artificial urgency
in the mania
of all those feeds
feeds that tell me
get on that plane
refresh that page
toss that straw
into the sea
consume
consume
consume.

If I can make my difference
in habit alone
perhaps I can create a state of mind
that lasts a lifetime
a state of mind that takes me
outside the danger zone
the danger zone that whispers
who cares about icebergs
when they’re so far out of sight
so what if you take an uber
when you’re only a bike ride away.

Before I turn my phone back on
before I plug back in
let me take this feeling
unspool it
like an ancient tapestry
and in that tapestry find
a tectonic shift
a new chapter

a sea change.

PHOTO: Arrangement in Blue and Silver: The Great Sea by James McNeill Whistler (1885).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I wrote this poem during a power cut. Picking up a pen and writing in a notebook, away from the keyboard and screen, was a moment of revelation. It made me think: if we can remove ourselves, if only momentarily, from the updates and feeds that create such urgency within us, then perhaps our anxiety to consume will gradually go with it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robin Cantwell is a London-based graduate of the National Theatre and Theatre503 playwriting programmes. A lover of monologues, his writing for the stage has been showcased at the likes of Southwark Playhouse, Green Curtain Theatre and Anthroplay Theatre. Themes range from James Joyce’s writer’s block to the fear of your friends getting blue ticks on Instagram. His comic poetry has appeared in several UK and US anthologies, while he’s also a regular short fiction contributor to Pure Slush in Australia. He’s currently on the Faber & Faber Writing Academy, where he is writing his first novel.

Eating the Earth by CR Green (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Eating the Earth
by CR Green

The runway is set for banqueting.
As in every beginning, I am tempted.
For years I have consumed the elements:
viscose, polyester, nylon, rayon, spandex,

100 % linen, cottons. The blends slop
& swill, now fall through my swollen fingers.
I have walked ramps quickly while our only
Home—this baby blue—still rocks & rolls.

I have tried to devour it all before hunger
passed its use-by date. But will other faraway
eyes find nutrients in these packed, piled flavours,
dissolve sweet strata of silk stripes & rainbows,

bolting calicos, four changes of seasoned jerseys,
jacketed mountains of savory pants & pantaloons?
Can they absorb any vitamins from frozen paisley
frocks, from satin sewn by tiny hands?

Can they digest shrinking timelines of marbled
chiffon? Can another generation make perfume
from melting Pavlovian laces alongside baked
Alaskan velveteens waiting to set oceans

of carbonated crepe on fire? During the intermission,
let my tongue polish every sinking island until this
present chaos shines so bright an audience of angels
stares. I can hear their wings idling now.

Let them look deep into my core. Let me hear
what they are saying about the days left to eat:
Count them. They are precious.
                                               They are numbered. 

PHOTO: Floating Textiles by pixabay.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote this poem after experiencing Ruth Watson´s Geophagy following RikTheMost´s Spoken Word Workshop at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch, New Zealand, February, 2018. Greta Thunberg says, ¨The fashion industry is a huge contributor to the climate-and-ecological emergency, not to mention its impact on the countless workers and communities who are being exploited around the world in order for some to enjoy fast fashion that many treat as disposables.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: CR Green is an American-Kiwi living and writing from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her short stories and poetry have been published in such diverse places as The Loyalhanna Review (Pennsylvania), The Reach of Song (Georgia), The Poetry Distillery (New York State), Drawn to the Light (Ireland), and a fine line (New Zealand). One of her poems was recently shortlisted for the New Zealand Poetry Society´s Literary Heritage Awards. Visit her at apoetryperson.godaddysites.com and on Facebook.

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.

Stuff by Lynn White (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Stuff
by Lynn White

It’s easy for me.
Even though I’ve planned it
and psyched myself up,
when I walk into the shop
and see rail upon rail of stuff
it overwhelms me,
I can’t be bothered to look,
can’t be bothered
to sort through it all.

It takes only seconds for me to realise
that my jacket,
or jeans,
or coat,
or shirt
are good for a few more years.

It’s harder for those who shop as a hobby,
who get a buzz like a shot of tequila
from the pleasure of buying new,
especially when it’s so cheap,
but we’re drowning in it
all the stuff.
It’s squeezing us out of our homes,
filling up our land
stifling our oceans,
burning up our planet
with it’s nonstop production
and speedy conversion to rubbish.

It’s those little things
and some people just don’t buy it!

PAINTING: Shirts by Oleksandr Hnylyzkyj (2002).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I think that consumerism is the elephant in the room. So many of the things we do as individuals, though always valuable—especially when we discuss them—nevertheless have a very small impact. But not buying into the consumerist ethic can have a really large impact—especially if we talk about it!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy, and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud “War Poetry for Today” competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Gyroscope Review, and So It Goes. Visit her at lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and on Facebook.

Wash Me in Intention by Jaya Avendel (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Wash Me in Intention
by Jaya Avendel

Mosaiced at the banks with
Pink, blue, and yellow plastics
Water chokes between the drowning
Colors, cuts into the earth and
Sinks ice into skin.

Ask for paper
If the cloth on your flesh
Cannot warp into a bag.

Ask for paper
If your golden locks cannot
Braid into a basket.

Press glass to your cheek
Scatter rocks dipped in sugar syrup
For the bees; preserve in honey and wax
Dreams and moments of sweet intention.

PAINTING: Beautiful rhythm in the lotus pond by Dayou Lu (2019).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My sisters visited the James River a few months ago and told me the water was thick, muddy-yellow, clogged with plastic bags and trash. Plastic waste is one of the biggest threats to marine life. Plastics also impede our ability to maintain a healthy, clean water supply on earth due to short life, increased use, and poor waste disposal. It is not much but asking for paper bags at the shops and using reusable shopping bags is one of the many small things my family and I are able to do to help reduce plastic waste in the want of a cleaner future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jaya Avendel is a micro poetess and word witch from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, passionate about life where it intersects with writing and the dreamscapes lost in between. With writing published at Green Ink Poetry, Lamplit Underground, Feral Magazine, and The Anthropocene Hymnal Anthology, she writes at ninchronicles.com and tweets as @AvendelJaya.

News by Barbara Eknoian (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

News
by Barbara Eknoian

The polar bears
are drowning
off the coast of Alaska
swimming eighty miles
to find seals.
It’s the Big Melt,
the CNN announcer says,
and walrus pups swim
without their mother,
they can’t keep up
with her search for food.
The camera pans in
on lean polar bears
desperately eating
birds and berries
on their way
to extinction.
The polar bears
are drowning
off the coast of Alaska.

PAINTING: Thin ice by Oleksandr Hnylyzkyj (2008).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was originally published in 2006 by New Verse News. Sadly, the climate situation with the Big Melt has worsened. With the world now calling attention to the severity of our climate problems, hopefully, it can improve. As Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist says, “When enough people come together, then change will come, and we can achieve almost anything.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Eknoian is a grandmother of five, and is praying for solutions to our climate change. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Pearl, Red Shift, Your Daily Poem, and New Verse News. Her poetry book, Why I Miss New Jersey, and her latest novel, Hearts on Bergenline Avenue, are available at Amazon. Her poetry chapbook, Life Is But a Dream, was published by Arroyo Seco Press.

The Luxury of Fearlessness by Lara Dolphin (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

The Luxury of Fearlessness
by Lara Dolphin

If your Nerve, deny you—Go above your Nerve
                                             —Emily Dickinson

The Earth cannot wait until I am unafraid,
until I am ready to speak.

I was never meant to last.

I will sing the songs of the forests,
the wilderness and the seas.
I will turn poems into praxis.

How can we make the world whole
if we are invisible?
Do you see me?
I am already broken.

PAINTING: The Golden Bowl by Frank Cadogan Cowper (1956).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Inspired by the wisdom of Audre Lorde’s posthumous collection Your Silence Will Not Protect You, and the teachings of Thai Buddhist monk Ajahn Chah, this poem aims to spur poets to bravely advocate on behalf of the environment. If you’d like to join a team of writers and environmentalists turning language into action, consider joining Writing the Land.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife, and mom of four amazing kids; she is exhausted and elated most of the time. Find her on Facebook.

Axis by Sheikha A. (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Axis
by Sheikha A.

for Aine MacAodha

We are nowhere near higher knowing —
the planes of the earth’s aura — mounds
of rise and fall of land and water, we travel
towards an oasis through mazes of carbon;
and we plant for trees to save our migration —
the mountains to stop breaking. Falling birds
and floating fish have traversed the desperate
colours exuding gradient of black and grey —
while our hairs turn white; we age like fruits
plucked off trees raw, further from knowing.

We are close to knowing — our feet edge
inwards to the choked trilling of silence —
our habitat converses and winds carry
their whispers telling us to wake up
from the lore of complacency; the wild
bushes’ receding glimmer. There will be
an end some day, everything up in smoke;
but at this time that hasn’t begun ceasing
and auras keep pulsing, we need to save us
an energy to return to long after we are over.

PAINTING: Nature of Nature by Jeremy Henderson (2004).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I believe all beings on this planet are connected somehow, whether tangibly (in the sense of physical proximity) or telepathically (with people we’ve never met). Just today, I learnt of the demise of someone I knew on social media as a brilliant poet. From a favour this person did to me without even knowing who I was, out of nowhere, the thought of her crossed my mind leading me to check her profile to learn of her passing away. Point being, as we age there is a craving for superior knowledge that takes over us — the wanting to know the beyond. And, in seeking, we realise the answers are right here in the environment, be it people or flora or fauna or plain nature to which we never paid any attention, and if we had, we’d realise how much of what’s inside us doesn’t find healing because what’s outside of us — the air and water and land and food, etc. — is clogging and suffocating. Ultimately, we’ll be facing threats greater than what we aren’t perceiving right now. Our future generations may be forced to morph with the speed of anthropological advances depriving them the beauty of slow momentum — they probably won’t know of the beauty of nature we experienced because the earth will have probably changed by the time they exist, and through them we’d have lost the thread of post-existing too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Her work appears in a variety of literary venues, both print and online, including several anthologies by different presses. Recent publications include Strange Horizons, Pedestal Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Silver Birch Press, and Abyss and Apex. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Albanian, Italian, Arabic, Polish, and Persian. She is the co-author of a digital poetry chapbook entitled Nyctophiliac Confessions available through Praxis Magazine. Find more of her work at sheikha82.wordpress.com.

FENG-SHUI by Robert Lima (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH SERIES)

F E N G – S H U I
by Robert Lima

Residences
of the living
and the dead
are to be sited
in harmony
with local currents
of the Cosmic Breath,
the Demons to be kept
a f a r,
good fortune
to be had
when all is as it should be
in the scheme of things

*

Wind and Water
cojoined
through the
Geomantic Art
give sense to the
continuance
of life on Earth,
an integration of Elementals
fostering what needs to be
for Earth to heal

PAINTING: Harmony (Wa) by Maki Haku.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: “Feng-Shui” is premised on the philosophy of following the right way to improve life. While the system has many applications, as in the poem’s first stanza,  I’ve chosen to have the last stanza focus on the path towards healing of the Earth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Lima is a Cuban-born, award-winning American poet, and an internationally recognized critic, cultural historian, bibliographer, playwright, and translator. Among his numerous critical studies are books on García Lorca, Valle-Inclán, Borges, Surrealism, folklore, dramatic literature, and translations of plays and poetry. He was invited and read his poetry for the archives at the Hispanic Division of The Library of Congress. He has published 18 poetry collections and 20 prose books. Knighted by His Majesty King Juan Carlos I of Spain in 2003 and by the Prince of Borbón in 2017, he is listed in Who’s Who in the World and other international directories.