Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Remembering Carol for Earth Day

Carol  Waller Youmans
1940-2019
Take down the
Sleek
Shrieking
Emblems of greed and corruption
Degrading the ridges’ calm
By humans so far removed from nature’s touch,
Perspective, alignment, understanding,
They destroy rather than revere.
They think when God gave them dominion
(as the scriptures say)
She meant exploiters not stewards,
Reverence, honor, humility, not slaughter.
But they will not destroy the earth.
Earth will win when our teeming terms shut down.
When the last of the swarming, brawling, quarrelling race
Asphyxiates or starves or drowns,
The earth will go on serene and free of mange.

Carol Youmans
Barton, August 2017


Carol's sister Adrien writes, "Carol was passionate about theater, painting, and life. Generous with her time and affection, she was a friend and mentor to many colleagues and students throughout her life. She had style, an often wicked sense of humor, and sparkle!"


Some other poems for Earth Day by NEK Wednesday Poets follow.


The Earth Cries Out 

We as citizens of the earth must speak up.
The silent scream is no longer silent.
The earth is being mismanaged into oblivion.
This cannot be allowed to continue.
Our sacred earth is crying out in pain.
Pain that is unbearable.
The earth has been defiled and exploited
Plundered and looted.
It has been left to die.
Doing nothing is not acceptable.
Silence is not the answer.
We need to be mad as hell.
Crying out for justice for our fragile earth.
We as citizens of the earth must take action.
The earth cries out and we must respond to the cry.
Everyday is Earth Day, not just one.

                                                                            George Squires 




WILDFLOWER HUNT

Where wildflowers are the woods are waiting. We can see the ridge from our backyard, my sister and I, and the dark greens and the pale, the blues of its distant canopy are waving to us when suddenly our father says, Let’s go for a drive up the mountain. My sister rides shotgun next to our father so I’ve got the backseat all to myself, my six year-old body stretched out full on the warm leather, eyes squinting in the sun, the car weaving its way up the mountain. Telephone wires rise and sink, waltzing outside the open window like they can hear some sweet and secret music. I think I hear it too, and I’m humming to myself when we pull off the main road onto a side spur and the car goes bumping over a narrow cut between tall trees. My father stops and we get out, our usual whooping voices toned down to whispers in this green and quiet place. We follow a well-used deer path into the woods where my sister spots our first wildflower: Trillium, my father says, a word that sounds regal to me, and I squat to look more closely at its three scarlet petals like the hood and high collar of the Red Queen in a picture book I saw once. The next one is a funny word and we giggle when we hear it: Pipsissewa, named by the Indians, my father says. And as soon as he points it out, we see it everywhere, dark green jaggedy leaves peeking out of the black dirt and pine needles, a few with their clusters of pinkish white blossoms. Pipsissewa, pipsisssewa, I chant under my breath, and then I spy something else. Tiny blue bells hanging from their tender stems, and I wonder: who might ring them? Some people call these witches thimbles, my father says but only my pinky finger is small enough to slip inside. Up ahead my sister finds water gushing from the rock face on the high side of our trail. My father pulls some magic rings from his pocket, metal circles that telescope out from one another and rise up to form a cup. He dips it in the rushing water and we each take a long drink, so cold and so sweet. My father keeps us walking long into the afternoon, and my legs are growing tired. He’s looking for something, I can tell, but he doesn’t say what. Finally he motions us over to a small, hidden patch of flowers standing tall on sturdy stems: Lady Slippers, he says, but they look less like Cinderella’s famous shoes and more like fancy ladies dancing, each with outstretched arms and puffy pink dresses. These are a real prize, he tells us, not easy to find. We kneel beside them, our gentle hands reverent with care. Lightly we touch them, as if caressing a slender foot. We know without being told that these, like the others, are not to be picked. We wind our way back up the mountain passing through a clearing of yellow dandelions and tall weeds frosted white with Queen Anne’s lace. Our hands are empty but wildflowers are imprinted now on the bright undersides of our eyelids, and we practice their names on our tongues until my sister breaks into a Girl Scout song, our hushed voices long since lost to the day. We sing all the way back to the car: I love to go a’wandering along the mountain track. After awhile, our father joins in.

 

                                                                                        Lucette Bernard,  April 14, 2021

**********************88**** 


Communion                     by Kathryn Kyker


 When we are young, if we are lucky,  

The old ones lead us to Her in places dappled

Streams sing over rocks worn smooth, through patches of light in

Tunnels of green, seeking: lilies, watercress, minari, slow pulse of place

Endless moments saturated with treasure unearned and essential

A secret sacred story

Reverence our only offering

 

If the moment resonates in you still, the initiation took.

 

She turns languidly

 

as we toggle back and

forth in factory-made

lives of  forgetfulness, one

action begets another in

service to a product—sure 

to mean everything-- that

means nothing.

 

Our memory veiled til we taste her on the air: the sticky sweet

Of hyacinth, the tangy salt of the shore, the petrichor of rain on dirt.

 

 She unfolds

Onto fingers smelling of marigolds, in sun bleached

Pebbles at a far-from-home beach, in the wind tormented

Tree hugging a hillside, and

When we are old, if we are lucky,

we lead the young ones and She

 

Is waiting

A secret sacred story shared

Reverence our only offering

 

If it resonates in you still, the initiation took.

 

by kk, with thanks to Sylvia, Lucette, Tina, and Lee Isaac Chung



                        Easter Eggs                                    

 

On Easter, I issue orders to ingredients as Mom

comes with an escort of red tulips. No longer

 

tight at attention, they flaunt their insides boldly,

at ease. A movie plays, an ancient burial

 

unearthed, as I crack egg after egg, til one reveals 

a dark curl of limbs, intending to be more

 

than a quiche at Easter, but there are no miracles

here. I tuck him deep in the mulch bucket under

 

a garlic skin blanket. Tomorrow he will feed

the groundhog patrolling the field. You  

 

arrive, reporting for duty on the home front, shields

up. I tell no one that a dead baby chicken tried  

 

to join our vegetarian feast, but I can barely eat for

seeing that delicate swirl of life in a home that

 

failed to defend him from his own fragility


                                                                Kathryn Kyker,  4/2021



Winter Light

 

                        Bold walls

                        Bold roofs and windows

                        Unencumbered spaces.

 

                        Just the dried stalks

                        by the roadside;

 

                        The milkweed

                        with its sudden white

                        generosity spilling

                        and being carried

                        mysteriously above

                        the fields.

 

                        The red barn

                        with the white trim

                        is itself a mute

                        fact in the field.

 

             Shadows of bare limbed trees

 etched on the faces of houses.

 

            The dying of the leaves

            gives us a glimpse

            of the bright plastic slide

            in our neighbor’s backyard.

 

            How along with nature’s

            shorn self

            we become slowly

            one people;

            our flattening privacy

            undressed.

 

            Coming over the rise

            a sudden pond

            never seen before;

            a green roofed

            viewing cottage

            on its bank.

 

Without their leaves

the trees are dancers.

 

Only in the most densely

packed forest

cedar boughs

hug close to the ground.

The spaces dark.

 

At higher elevation

grass stalks

are the foreground

for blue mountains

and regattas

of clouds.

 

Maples are muscular

and wild.

The oldest maples

tremendous

and prophetic.

                                                                  Jed Feffer                                                                                                                             November 6, 2019


Sunday, April 11, 2021

Resurrection, by Ellen Mass

[Our prompt for the April 7 meeting was the theme of Resurrection.  Ellen Mass brought us her poem that follows.  It makes reference to the work of Flannery O'Connor.]  



The entire game plan of salvation hung on atonement and resurrection of the Messiah.

 

 

Resurrection

 

True or not, belief of it changes everything in you

If something isn’t true, like making the dead come alive, says the misfit,

     Do as you please with any time you have left.

 

Say “no” to the forces of darkness,

   Raise yourself above the fray of violence-

       Your resurrection is then assured, so

       implies teachings of Jesus.

 

Jesus threw everything off balance by raising the dead,

    said the misfit, as grandmother also questioned this belief, doubting

       like Thomas whether he did or not -

       just before they stopped; murdered Bailey’s family -

              It was the escapee’ from crime.

   

Staring into the non-believers eyes, grandma

           Saw herself,

            Pleading, You are one of my children, then

                    silence after three shots.

 

No belief in life after death, Misfit 

          was not there at Christ’s crucifixion, or he’d believe.

          He would be a different person --if he could believe.

          Compassion of grandmother revealed his broken soul.

                            She was also duplicitous and bold

 However,

To tell the O’Connor Catholic story, whole

    Grandmother died for his sins and was resurrected - herself and her kin

        For Flannery knew ascension and resurrection as a heavenly win

        Thus, I loved Flannery for her life concern

        That the wretched of the earth shall never burn