There's room for a 6th tab, but what should go here?
-- List of environmental poems I've posted over the years
-- Environmental quotes that move me
-- A picture gallery of my garden
-- A list of environmental books I adore
-- How many times the word "tree" appears in my blog
-- Artistically nude pictures of my cat
All pending options as I reimagine the 6th tab. But for now, option one is below--perhaps to become permanent.
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Dew Light – W.S. Merwin
“through the early garden / only the day and I are here with no / before or after”
Veil – Todd Davis
“and where the fog is heaviest and stays / longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves / on trees, the flowers that grow / the fullest.”
The Sunflowers – Mary Oliver
“the long work / of turning their lives / into a celebration / is not easy.”
His Wife – Andrew Hudgins
“Her eye is clear, her body full of light, / and when, at night, I hold her close, / she smells of mint and lemon balm.”
Monarchs – Sharon Olds
“the butterflies moving / in masses past my window, floating / south to their transformation, crossing over / borders in the night, the diffuse blood-red / cloud of them, my body under yours, / the beauty and silence of the great migrations.”
Embers – Henri Cole
“A rose can't shut itself / and be a bud again. It's a malady, / wanting it.”
Bodies – Jude Nutter
“every / flower is bruised hollow with light / and for a while they ignite like the naves / of churches.”
Not Knowing Why – Ann Struthers
“they were born to fly, / because they have nothing else to do, / because wind and water are their elements, / their Bach, their Homer, Shakespeare, / and Spielberg.”
Tasting the Dust – Jean Janzen
“Sometimes I join him, raking / the pages of leaves, but the garden / is his, the place which gathers / struggles from his hands / and returns its own”
Against Lawn – Grace Bauer
“The midnight streetlight illuminating / the white of clover assures me / I am right not to manicure / my patch of grass”
Nostos – Louise Gluck
“We look at the world once, in childhood. / The rest is memory.”
Did I Miss Anything – Tom Wayman (not naturey, but teachery)
“Everything. I gave an exam worth / 40 per cent of the grade for this term / and assigned some reading / due today / on which I'm about to hand out a quiz / worth 50 per cent.”
Streets -- Naomi Shihab Nye
"Overhead loud grackles are claiming their trees / and the sky which sews and sews, tirelessly sewing, / drops her purple hem. / Each thing in its time, in its place, / it would be nice to think the same about people."
Butterfly Bush – Peter Pereira
“I used to love the buddleia, / its long purple trumpets in summer / buzzing with hummingbirds and butterflies”
The Red Poppy – Louise Gluck
“Oh my brothers and sisters, / were you like me once, long ago, / before you were human? Did you / permit yourselves / to open once, who would never / open again?”
Milkweed – James Wright
“Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for / Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes / Loving me in secret.”
Bindweed – James McKeon
“this hoard of Lazaruses popping up / at night, not the Heavenly Blue / so like silk handkerchiefs, / nor the Giant White so timid / in the face of the moon”
Meditation at Lagunitas – Robert Haas
“There are moments when the body is as numinous / as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. / Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, / saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.”
Blackberry Eating – Galway Kinnell
“the ripest berries / fall almost unbidden to my tongue, / as words sometimes do”
Happiness -- Paisley Rekdal
"If I could not have made this garden beautiful / I wouldn't understand your suffering, / nor care for each the same, inflamed way. / I would have to stay only like the bees, / beyond consciousness, beyond self- / reproach, fingers dug down hard / into stone, growing nothing."
In Blackwater Woods – Mary Oliver
“To live in this world / you must be able / to do three things”
