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).

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. 

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.

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. 

The Promise of a New Year by Mohini Malhotra (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

The Promise of a New Year
by Mohini Malhotra

And the new year will swoop in on wings of lace
Alight on slippers dipped in moonlight
With a rain so soft it caresses the air
A snow so thick it blankets the earth and lets it rest
And us too, for a while
It will come with promise
For that is what we live on

The rain arrives as a precursor
Drops like crystal earrings, drops like slanting parallel lines
Filling the earth’s thirsty pores, the trees’ searching roots
Washing memories clean of what we wish to lose
Of this year past
The snow spreads her mantle over earth, rests her ear close to hear the      earth’s heartbeat, the
rustle of life beneath the soil

I hear it, I hear it coming—this new year
like a breath of wind, like a sigh
It arrives
And I promise to it to see the world as it asks to be seen—
Taste rain touch moss watch snow rest on tree branches listen to the      chatter of birds hidden in
Laurels and Hollies at that hour each day—
When the sun paints the bare tree barks and branches gold, outlines      clouds in neon pink and
floods the sky with fire.

Come in new year, come in.

ART: Heartfelt by Miriam Shapiro.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mohini Malhotra is an international development economist, adjunct professor, and founder of a social enterprise to promote women artists and invest in causes that better women’s and girls’ lives. She loves language and her fiction has appeared in anthologies (This is What America Looks Like, 2021, Essential Anthology, forthcoming), Gravel, West Texas Literary Review, Silver Birch Press, Blink-Ink, Flash Frontier, 82 Star Review, a Quiet Courage, and other literary journals.

Ode to a Redbud by Margaret Dornaus (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Ode to a Redbud
by Margaret Dornaus

it is a serious thing // just to be alive /
on this fresh morning / in this broken world.
            —Mary Oliver, “Invitation”

Redbud, such a simple name for such
a complicated tree. You, with blooms so red
they’re purple, fostering a crooked understory
at the edge of my forest garden. You,
doing your best all your brief life to disguise
the gnarled knot of your trunk, your brittle,
hard-knock scars with leaves that pass for teardrops
or hearts—depending on perspective, depending
on the season. You, growing without fanfare before
bursting in on early spring, an awkward adolescent, once
reviled; now kowtowed to by the sudden delicate
droop of a dogwood’s subservient white petals.
O, tree of my youth, have you come to tempt me
into yesterday’s fairytale of possibilities?
To sweep me off unsteady feet, take me for a ramble
in your branching arms, hold me close, heartwood
to heartwood, showering me with a hundred fascicles
of passion until I cry out, turn toward your light and beg
for mercy and the fire to believe in happily-ever-after
beginnings, if not endings today? This day, your day,
my day. This day of sweet imperfect beauty
in this broken world.

First appeared in the June 2021 issue of MockingHeart Review. 

PHOTO: Redbud tree in spring by pixabay.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote this poem during the height of the pandemic from the sanctuary of the Ozark forest that surrounds my woodland home. Even before the daily onslaught of Covid-19, the vast collection of trees—oak, ash, pine, sweetgum, hickory—outside my front door provided me with a healing presence. But it took the heartbreaking beauty of a flowering redbud I planted years before the pandemic for me to realize the role each and every tree has to play as we struggle to heal our broken world.

PHOTO: Redbud tree, photo by the author (Spring 2021).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Margaret Dornaus holds an MFA in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. Her first book of poetry, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose, received a 2017 Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America. In 2020, she had the privilege of publishing a pandemic-themed anthology—behind the mask: haiku in the time of Covid-19—through her small press, Singing Moon. Other recent work appears in Global Pandemic, MacQueen’s Quiinterly, Naugatuck Review, Silver Birch Press’ I AM STILL WAITING series, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Lindenwood Review. 

Ocean Questions by Tom Lagasse (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Ocean Questions
by Tom Lagasse

There will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.

As the five gyres of plastic expand will the king
mackerels and greater amberjacks shrug

And ask—Is this the ongoing cost of doing
business in today’s global economy?

Will their DNA become partially plasticized
like credit cards so they may survive without

Needing schools to intermingle and learn
From one another? Is there enough time

For dolphins and whales to create a new language
to communicate to their fellow mammals

A single hero casting a life preserver ring to
The drowning cannot save the ocean?

PAINTING: Fish by M.C. Escher (1942).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tom Lagasse’s poetry has appeared in Poetically Magazine, The Feminine Collective, Black Bough’s Poetry Freedom & Rapture and Dark Confessions; Faith, Hope, and Fiction; Silver Birch Press Prime Movers Series, Freshwater Literary Review, Word Mill Magazine, The Monterey Poetry Review, a half dozen anthologies, and more. He can be found at @tomlagasse (Twitter), @tom_lagasse (Instagram), facebook.com/tjlagasse, and tlagasse.com.  He lives in Bristol, Connecticut.