Monday, February 9, 2015

A poem

Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago. It's dedicated to Aldo Leopold, author of "A Sand County Almanac".

I love and listen and learn from the animals
Their cunning and stealth defy morality
In matters of death they show no partiality
Their lives are imbued with a wild vitality

Once I thought God lived in the sky
Now I know he's a behemoth who swims in the sea
He tastes like the honey cured by a bee
He looks like a turtle that's seen eternity

God is an elephant who weeps for the Earth
He's the wild goose soaring some six miles high
You can hear his voice in the loon's lonely cry
And the more you listen, the less you die

Sometimes I'd like to be so free
No future, no past, just this present moment
To live by the law of genetic endowment
To live without shame or need for atonement

But I am just a mortal woman
One part spirit and equally human
And though I hear the Earth cry and my soul is bleeding
I know we can never return to Eden