DO THEY KNOW?

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

My nature app is as baffled as I

Along the upland trail

Above Rock Creek

In the wild wooded heart of Washington, DC

 

The forest floor is mantled in unfamiliar green

Paired leaves with parallel veins

An emerald carpet, enigmatic

Until recognition dawns

Sprouts of American beech, thousands

Are gathered in ritual circles

Around the smooth gray trunks of their parent trees

Who rise from the earth like standing stones

A menace is advancing

In the wake of chestnut blight

Dutch elm disease, woolly adelgid

And emerald ash borer, marching toward the capital

Beech leaf disease, as determined as Civil War General Jubal Early,

Not quite present yet but promising a deadly campaign

Could it be the Rock Creek Park beeches got word through a signal corps

Beyond our understanding, with news traveling by root or forest atmosphere? 

If only we had known what was coming for us

And thrown down our own green gauntlet

Melanie Choukas-Bradley lives in the beautiful yet besieged capital city of Washington, DC. She is the author of  City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park and Wild Walking. Many of her poems have appeared in The New Verse News.

VAINGLORIOUS

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 

 

 

 

In a word

 

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and author living in metropolitan Washington, DC. Her books include City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons. Many of her poems have appeared in The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

WE WANT YOU TO KNOW

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

While tanks roll through our streets
We want you to know
We are vulnerable and resilient like you
 
This police state wannabe is not us
We are the fish jumping in the Potomac
The magnolia filling the air
 
We are fireflies testing the night
The bullfrog and the cathedral bell
The convergence of rivers
 
As this martial maelstrom
Storms land and sky
Our osprey nestlings hope only to fledge

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a Washington, DC naturalist and author of Wild Walking, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and City of Trees. Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and Plenty Magazine.

FISH CROWS

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

The fish crows in my neighborhood
Are engaged in conversation
Not the sharp caws of their cousins
More of a quiet how are you I am too
In nasal tones that don’t hurt for sounding French
 
Small Andrena mining bees
Are on the wing in Rock Creek Park
Gathering pollen from peppermint striped spring beauty flowers
Then flying home to feed their young
 
An osprey pair is nesting on the Potomac
In a marriage surviving biannual journeys
Of thousands of miles
 
We too are nesting and gathering
And quietly conversing all across America
Wishing to be seen and heard
Or not seen and heard
Wishing to carry on

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and author of several nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons. Many of her poems have been featured in The New Verse Newsand Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

LET’S REDEFINE POWER

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

This cherry blossom
Fluttering down three days from now
Holds more power than a billy club
 
This daffodil trumpeting spring
Heralds the quickening glory
 
You can crush you can kill
But you can’t do this
Unfurl sweetly to the sun

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is wandering among the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC. She is the author of several nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Wild Walking. Many of her poems have been featured in The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

EQUINOX

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

AI-generated image by Evgeniatretyakova56 via Dreamstime

Let’s deep six the hatchet and the chainsaw

Bury the guns, ground the bombers

And honor this day of balance

From pole to pole

 

Equal light, equal dark

Overspreading inequity

A banquet where all are welcome

All can eat

 

Tomorrow the hemispheres will

Tilt toward spring or fall

Today earth and sun proffer balance

Let us align

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a Washington, DC naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had several previous poems published in the The New Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” Her poetry has also been featured on nature-oriented websites.

THERMOGENESIS

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 

Here in Washington, DC

Where we have some actual swamps

Glorious muddy places it would be criminal to drain

Skunk Cabbage flowers

Are bursting through the ice and snow

Generating their own heat

Their meat-red spathes

Coddling round golden spadices

Tricking carrion flies to pollinate them

Here at the Lunar New Year

Let’s make like the Skunk Cabbage

Thermogenesis!

 

Author’s note: I submitted this poem hours before the January 29th plane crash in Washington, DC. My heart goes out to the family and friends of everyone connected with this tragedy, to the city of Wichita, Kansas, and to my own city, where creative resilience is needed now more than ever.

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a Washington, DC naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had several previous poems published in the The New Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” Her poetry has also been featured on nature-oriented websites.

DIVING DUCKS ON NEW YEAR’S DAY

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley 

Art by Doug Pifer for The WV Independent Observer

Lithe buffleheads and mergansers
Newly down from Canada
Tandem dive into the rough blue Potomac
 
Wind whips the sycamores
Causing their spheres of seeds to
Dance as clouds race above
 
Next week Jimmy Carter will lie in state
And then Donald Trump returns
 
Today ducks are diving
Let’s just watch them dive

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a Washington, DC naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had several previous poems published in the The New Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” Her poetry has also been featured on nature-oriented websites.

LET’S DROP THE BALM

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Salve for the whole planet
Nuclear, to the last atomic particle
A wind so obliterating it removes all hate
Leaving a fallout of divine love with no half-life
Across all lands, all cells, all souls
 

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had three previous poems published in the New Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” 

THE GRANITE STATE

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

Wildfire smoke from western Canada settles in the atmosphere in Franklin [New Hampshire] on Friday evening. Wildfires from western provinces of Canada brought smoke to the Northeast, where an air quality advisory last weekend included central and western Massachusetts, all of Vermont and northern New Hampshire. (Daniel Sarch/The Laconia Daily Sun photo August 19, 2024)

My Dad remembers 
Dust on snow in the 1930s
Drifted cross-continent from the Plains
 
But he doesn’t remember early 
Wildfire smoke from Canada
Locking the mountains in haze
 
Every summer now
Dimensionless white days
Hot-hued sunsets, red moons 
 
At 96, he sighs, resigned
We ignored the elements 
At our peril and now 
 
Air is visible, Water speaks in drowning tones
And Fire strips us down to Earth
Down to the granite state

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley writes from New Hampshire, known as the “Granite State,” where the White Mountains are currently engulfed in Canadian wildfire smoke. This morning she asked her 96 year-old dad if he remembered wildfire smoke earlier in his lifetime. He replied: “No, but I do remember dust on the snow when I was a child during the Dust Bowl.” Melanie is a naturalist and award-winning author of eight nature books, including Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons, City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, andFinding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island. She has had two previous poems published in the New Verse News and many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including four that have won “Moon Prizes.” Her poems have also been featured on nature-oriented websites.

VERMONT FLOODWATER

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 

Shot on an angle by their dad from behind

My great niece and nephew stand in silence on a bridge over the Winooski River

Dressed for Taekwondo in red and white

Boy with hand on concrete rail, girl in form-ready pose

 

They are frozen in the video, like children in a painting

As the wild Winooski race-churns below, disregarding streets

Down from the mountains, wild brook to wild river, a New England water rodeo

Riding Vermont farm, village and town, with too much water from too much rain

 

Ten days ago their grandmother, my sister, texted a photo of Camel’s Hump

Wreathed in Canadian wildfire smoke, yesterday a video of her playful stream in murder mode

Tiny Vermont, in the climate crosshairs

Hill and hamlet no longer safe retreat

 

During Irene I watched the covered bridge of my childhood

Die an animal death on national television, falling wounded in seconds

I grew up drinking sap from the bucket

And long for the sweetness of Old Vermont

 

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees,  A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Islan,d and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She began writing poetry during the pandemic and has had several poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice, including “How to Silence a Woman,” and “If I have loved you,” both of which won “Moon Prizes.” Earlier this year The New Verse News published her poem The Water Cooler following multiple mass shootings. Melanie grew up in Vermont wandering the woods and fields, and her heart aches for her family and friends who are dealing with catastrophic flooding in Vermont.

THE WATER COOLER

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

Blood stains and a small section of police tape show the scene where multiple people were injured following an overnight shooting at the Dior Bar & Lounge in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023. Credit: Michael Johnson/AP

Gather round the water cooler

For the latest on the latest mass shooting

How many dead, how many critical

 

Let’s put our heads together and get the facts

Where the wounded hid, how many rounds

What the cops did and didn’t do

 

The victims have our thoughts and prayers

They have our attention

We are talking about it, talking and talking

 

Until talk turns to the next one

 

 

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island, and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She began writing poetry during the pandemic and has had many poems published by Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured several of her poems during the past year, including “How to Silence a Woman,” and “If I have loved you,” both of which won “Moon Prizes.” Melanie grew up in Vermont wandering the woods and fields and has never stopped wandering.  She leads nature and history field trips for Smithsonian Associates, the US Botanic Garden, the Nature Conservancy, Politics & Prose Bookstore, and many other organizations in the Washington, DC area.