In Honor of the Earth and Its Inhabitants

A Bird Came Down the Walk

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,

And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,
 —They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

                                       — Emily Dickinson





The Way Through the Woods

'They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. 
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know 
There was once a path through the woods
Before they planted the trees: It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees 
That, where the ring-dove broods 
And the badgers roll at ease, 
There was once a road through the woods. 
Yet, if you enter the woods
 Of a summer evening late, 
When the night-air cools on the trout-ring’d pools 
Where the otter whistles his mate (They fear not men in the woods 
Because they see so few), 
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet 
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through 
The misty solitudes, 
As though they perfectly knew 
The old lost road through the woods ... 
But there is no road through the woods.
                  
                                       — Rudyard Kipling

A Minor Bird

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
                — Robert Frost

Of Many Worlds in This World

Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found:
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape:
For creatures, small as atoms, there may be, 
If every one a creature's figure bear.

If atoms four, a world can make, then see
What several worlds might in an ear-ring be:
For, millions of those atoms may be in
The head of one small, little, single pin.
And if thus small, then ladies may well wear
A world of worlds, as pendents in each ear.

           — Margaret Cavendish

Remember 

Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. 
Remember sundown and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. 
You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people are you.
Remember you are this universe and this universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.
           
                                            — Joy Harjo