EARTH DAY

by Pepper Trail

I.

 

Let us give thanks

 

In gatherings or on our own

Stepping carefully upon the earth

Looking closely, bending to the flowers

Lifting our eyes to the swallows and the soaring hawk

Listening to the wind combing the grass and

Carrying birdsong across the creek

Scenting the richness of the soil

Mindfully opening every gift

 

Let us give thanks

 

II.

 

Let us grieve

 

Remembering all that once was given

Meadows bright with butterflies

Daily chorusing of the birds

Far forest-clad horizons

Silent wilderness

Mighty rivers of ice

Blue whales and elephants

Coral reefs in dazzling splendor

 

Let us grieve

 

 

III.

 

Let us protest

 

Lest we surrender to the drowsy sun

In our multitudes, cry Enough!

Name the destroyers

Corporate greed

Oil addiction

Political cowardice

Denial of nature’s rights

Willful blindness to all we do

 

Let us protest

 

IV.

 

Let us plant

 

Let us fall to our knees

Prepare the waiting earth

With our soft and ignorant hands

Plant a tree native to this damaged place

A testament to our desperate hopes

Flourishing past our little lives

A lasting gift of breath 

For our survivors 

 

Let us plant

 

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

DUST TO DUST

by Jill Crainshaw

Photograph by Mark Fuller: "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shall return."

what prayer dare we utter when
unspeakable horrors silence
songs of children paralyze
tongues of poets we stumble over
all that remains—unspoken—

perhaps some ancient tree will
whisper wisdom into this unending
night—wilderness people do not
recognize its edenic lyric we
are dust to dust we will return we

are all dust and we are all creating
this mad mad world imposing
premature imprints of mortality on
unblemished foreheads of children
turned to ash in our clenching hands

someone save us from this fickle
foolishness why do we sacrifice innocent
blood to the thirsty ungroundedness of
our being we flinch gritty truth marks
us we are exiles in our own homes

holding our breath as tongues of fire
consume what really matters—save us
open our mouths to exhale the ashy
smell of repentance make our bones
remember we are dust to dust we will return—


Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

HOLIDAYS

by Katherine West 

Paleo Art by John Gurche

Today the wilderness is too big.
Even my own body
was made for an ancient
race created on a larger scale.
My hands are winter gloves,
gorilla hands, capable and waterproof.
My feet leave huge, deep prints
in the snow. My heavy head
is too big for my ski cap,
my thick arms too long for my coat.
I am a Neanderthal. I know what to do.
I have survived a lot. Wilderness and I
are the same size. Language
does not interest us. Nor love.

And yet, deep inside, resting under
my primitive heart like a baby,
is my modern self. And like a fetus
I curl in the warmth of the prehistoric
womb and suck my thumb.
I have bad dreams. I cry, but my tears
are absorbed by amniotic fluid
and my moans are muffled by blood.

I want to talk. I want to dance.
I want to read a book. Write a poem.
But everyone else is interested in survival—
their own, not mine. Like my splendid
cave woman, they eat meat. Not words.
Not views. Their dogs run off
with sheep innards hanging from their mouths.

They are right. I am wrong.
These holidays are about having enough
to eat. Not having enough to love.
We have come full circle—
grown thin and sensitive then
muscular and numb all over again.
My neighbor may freeze, but as long
as I don't, life is good.

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness, performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov, and teaches seasonal poetry workshops that revolve around "wilderness writing." She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lalitamba and Bombay Gin. Her poem "And Then the Sky" was recently nominated by TheNewVerse.News for a Pushcart Prize.

AND THEN THE SKY

by Katherine West 

The U.S. Air Force released a much-anticipated draft environmental impact statement for its proposal to modify the boundaries for military air space over southwest New Mexico, including areas that would be used for F-16 training missions out of Holloman Air Force Base over Grant County and the Gila National Forest. … One of the alternatives proposes that low-altitude training — meaning F-16s flying as low as 500 feet above ground level — be allowed over those areas. —Silver City Daily Press, November 1, 2019

Ground level, nothing
enters the wilderness, except feet—
horse feet, human feet. We start
at the river and work our way up
and through how many worlds?
From yellow willows through pink mini-canyons
through tawny and scarlet grasslands made by
fire and decorated with skeletons
to foot-tingling vertigo cliffs dropping
from white heights straight down to
vertical death straight out to horizontal
eye-flight—180 degrees of mountain waves
lapping at the sky.

And just like being lost at sea, I can feel
the lack of humanity. My human
radar finds nothing to ping against, no
roofs glinting in the sun, no
distant roar of traffic, or guns,
just the last of the falling leaves ticking
against each other like light rain on the roof,
catching the late sun like a flock of distant
birds at five o'clock.

Behind me, the pale half-moon rises silently
in the afternoon east—and I remember
how she rose with Venus on Halloween
when the first cold came and
made them very  bright—still brighter
than the new, too-fast moving, human
Stars that surround them—and I remember
that there is no wilderness in the sky
as the F16s detonate their weekly flight.

Katherine West lives near the Gila Wilderness, several hours from Silver City, New Mexico, where she and her musician husband perform music with poetry about the true meaning of wilderness.