Earthworms Deserve More Poems!

A friend recently asked me for a copy of this poem I wrote back in 1999, while at a writer's colony in Taos, New Mexico.

I'm glad she did, for I'd forgotten about it and was glad to be reunited with the strong pleasure I feel when I remember to take the time to commune with the worms. Earthworms are one of the many unsung heroes of the natural world. For gardeners, they're good friends, but all of us who eat are directly enriched by the work they do.

And so I hope you'll enjoy my poem, "Reward."

REWARD
You must first be willing to kneel before the meadow.
Align your ear to its uneven surface and you will hear
the wheezing earthworms below, rubbery locksmiths
tunneling through their monotonous dimension. You
will hear the mild sucking of the earth entering into them,
the rasping friction of soil undulating uneasily through
them, and its loose translation into unstrung
baby bracelets of aerated loam. Look around you,
for you are kneeling amidst a sea of worm-castings,
amidst their labor and its souvenirs.
Then smell the worked-over soil their bodies revise.
And in that scent, find the echo of the sound,
its manifestation: the world passed through
the earthworm’s body
a key in its keyhole,
music through its bell.

Cranky Thoughts/Earth Day

It's the day before "Earth Day" and bloggers everywhere will be blogging about Earth Day and so I too shall blog (briefly) about Earth Day.

I must confess, given the horrible state of planetary affairs, I'm feeling a bit cranky about Earth Day this year....the logical outcome of one too many articles about imperiled bats, deformed frogs, industrial beekeeping practices, and dead whales with garbage in their bellies—that kind of thing.

Of course, I support the concept of Earth Day, which marks its 40th anniversary this year. I applaud any effect to mobilize awareness of and action on environmental issues. I was seven on the first Earth Day and I remember it as a significant influence when I was a kid; Earth Day is an old, familiar friend.

My crabbiness, I guess, has to do with the name "Earth Day," which implies that the other 364 days aren't quite as urgently "earthy," and perhaps takes us off the hook after we're done attending to that one great (and successful) marketing campaign. (I am not saying that the Earth Day folks are suggesting as much—just noticing the way these word, this year, are resonating for me.)

Earth Day is every day. We live here every day. We sleep here—or lay awake worrying about diseased bats and light pollution—every night.

And we need to be doing a better job, every day and every night, of protecting this earth—her people, her water, her creatures, her land, and her sky (including that beyond our earth's atmosphere, which we have also, incredibly, managed to gum up with our junk).

I know I'm preaching to the converted here, so I'll also confess that perhaps what I am feeling is not really crankiness so much as sorrow. Because it's clear that all we're doing to protect the Earth, collectively and individually, is light years short of enough. As the environmental casualties, horrors, and insults mount, I'm left yearning for a better way to effect the changes we so desperately need.

What—besides blogging, donating to effective environmental organizations, planting bee-friendly gardens, recycling, cooling it on the consumerism, insisting upon serious campaign finance reform, signing online petitions, informing ourselves and sharing what we know with others, and promoting environmental awareness via clever marketing campaigns—should we be doing to turn this sad mess around?

I'd welcome your thoughts.

Pondering the Universe and Our Place In It

Pour yourself a nice cup of tea (or whatever) and enjoy this tour of the cosmos from the American Museum of Natural History.

Earth Rise, Earth Set