Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us,
giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair,
not because I have my head in the sand,
but because joy is what the earth gives me daily,
and I must return the gift.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Earth Day 2020
A native bee visits a stem of prairie blazing star
in the native plant garden my husband and I created
as an oasis for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.
As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.
~Christina Rossetti, (1830 – 1894)
Beginnings
“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea -“
But we have only begun
To love the earth.
We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
– so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
– we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision
how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
Surely our river cannot
already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet-
there is too much broken
that must be mended,
too much hurt that we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.
~Denise Levertov, (1923 – 1997)
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us
to turn again to the earth
and in the contemplation of her beauties
to know the sense of wonder and humility.
~Rachel Carson, (1907 – 1964)
Not a single bee has ever sent you an invoice.
And that is part of the problem –
because most of what comes to us from nature is free,
because it is not invoiced,
because it is not priced,
because it is not traded in markets,
we tend to ignore it.
~Pavan Sukhdev
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man
than the way in which they can build
and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
~Robert Lynd, (1879 – 1949)
My Path with Stars Bestrewn 