Earth Day poems: “I’ve wanted to speak to the world for sometime now about you.”
Posted: April 22, 2013 Filed under: English, Maurice Kenny | Tags: Poems for Earth Day Comments Off on Earth Day poems: “I’ve wanted to speak to the world for sometime now about you.”
Maurice Kenny (Mohawk poet and teacher, born 1929)
new song
.
We are turning
eagles wheeling sky
We are rounding
sun moving in the air
We are listening
to old stories
Our spirits to the breeze
the voices are speaking
Our hearts touch earth
and feel dance in our feet
Our minds in clear thought
we speak the old words
We will remember everything
knowing who we are
We will touch our children
and they will dance and sing
As eagle turns, sun rises, winds blow,
ancestors, be our guides
Into new bloodless tomorrows.
. . .
ceremony
.
urgent/
night/ and not
even rain could
stop love-
making
in shadows
.
street unbuckled
rain slid down neck/
nipple/crotch
exposed to hands
all elements/
ancient mouth
tender as thistle-down
swallowed centuries
.
spent urgency
.
life re-newed/continues
stories are told
under winter moons
big orange melons
purple plums
.
Seminoles dance in this light
celebrate
Comanches dance in this light
celebrate, too/together
fixed in sweat/suction
of flesh to flesh
celebrate, too
.
rain/ and rain
washes sky clean
everything
is green
green sun, green moon, green dreams
and there is only
the good feeling
.
now to sleep
. . .
curt suggests
.
Passing through,
wolf presses snow,
disappears
as though winter moon
washed the fallen snow
drifting the mountain slope.
.
He howls
and I’m assured things
of the old mountain will
not only stay but survive.
It is all about survival…
not the internet, online
or standing, waiting for a big mac.
Humans have survived,
some say, perhaps too long.
Beauty. Nobility. Poetry.
Rewards for the warrior
who brought the village fire.
.
Wolf is always hunting.
Winter is long and frozen,
dark and deadly dangerous.
Farmers are armed.
Sleep without fat is eternal
and pups are bones in enemy’s teeth.
.
The politic is not the language,
not even the song belongs to the voice
until fires are built, walls erected
and it is safe to sleep. Then sing.
.
Raccoon falls from the elm,
a high branch.
Wolf watches from the hill.
Vocables quaver.
Rocks learn to sing
in the water of the swift river.
Now we stand erect
and walk through the green woods.
Our songs are safely sculpted
into ice and pray
it won’t melt
to the touch of the ear bending to echoes.
.
I don’t care if you are only passing
through these woods. Stay.
. . .
hawkweed
.
I’ve wanted to speak to the world
for sometime now about you.
There are many who confuse you with another wild
flower which is, in truth,
no relation not even
a distant, kissing cousin.
You don’t even look alike
nor survive in the same country-side.
Many people claim you are Indian
Paint Brush. Just today
a friend spotted your bloom
decorating the roadside grasses
and called out… “O there’s a beauty…
a paint brush.” I had
to explain the brush blooms
out west…Oklahoma…and
is red. Period.
.
You, on the other hand,
blossom here in the east
and your bloom is fire-
red or orange and sometimes
yellow and you came on the
Mayflower with the others
from across the seas.
.
Farmers think the hawk eats
your blossoms for sight,
vision, but we’re happy
you show up every spring
on the roadside or in the field
bringing colour to morning
though dotted with dew
or snake-spittle, bee-balm.
Up here in the Adirondacks
I’ve seen you rise in snow
when April/May arrived late.
.
Well, all I’ve really got
to say is if the farmer is right
then the red-tail is pretty smart
and deserves your sight.
Now we have to get the the other
humans to admit just who you are.
. . . . .
All poems © Maurice Kenny, from his collection In the Time of the Present (2000)
Photograph: Hieracium caespitosum a.k.a. meadow or field hawkweed
Zócalo Poets 