A tree laid its crown
on the ground, mindful
of the saplings nearby,
mindful to lay it across
the meadow somehow,
away from the sculptures.
Now an attentive ear
much taller than a poet
stays cocked at the side
of the footpath:
an enormous ellipse
of tangled root,
rock, and earth.
On a bright morning
walking down,
can you hear
the listening?
—- River Hook, Upper Nyack, New York
6 September 2021
Especially as a hurricane’s remnant turned our Hudson valley village into a river last week, and as today I helped my friend toss out ruined photos and sentimental things from her flooded basement, climate reality feels like a terrible fallout. Will we fall as gently and artfully as we can, preserving what we can? What choices in the next season’s extremes?
Concern about the environment must catch up to the moment we’re in. I’m facilitating a workshop in ecopoetic techniques with Mary Newell in Garrison, New York, on the morning of September 25. Join us this fall, in this falling moment through poetry, to elegize and to commit ourselves to renewal.
poet | artist 