Poetrepository

  To Be Human Is To Bear Witness Spiral milkweed pushes up green shoots And dirt is blowing And turbines are spinning Oak flowers dream of a...

  My Chlorophyll Heart I’m for photosynthetic optimism – the bulbous kind you plant in the fall in spite of squirrels who dig ruthlessly and...

  Nature Has Something To Say My name is Mary Jane. I have a twin. Don’t treat me as property. I am alive. I can hear and hold memories. I h...

  What I Know About Farming When I was a kid, local farmers raised sugar beets. Migrant workers hoed acres of fields by hand. Junior Soliz a...

  This is a found poem from the NPR article “A community of seed savers has a recipe to revive rare varieties of collard greens” In the sect...

  Let's talk. Let's talk about the wildfires there and the flooding here. Let's talk about the decreasing numbers of butterflies...

  Ode to the Minuscule To worm castings – bubbles of fresh soil, froth of loam. To beech’s leaf buds – tightly wrapped bronze spikes. To Squ...

  Last Wednesday, while I cleaned out the garden beds on a rare sunny morning, three Cooper's hawks gave me quite the show, swooping and...

  EARTH SPEAKS My oceans are dying. My forests are cut down or burning. My systems are weakened, and my glaciers are melting. So many specie...

  AT THE BIRD FEEDER I am the cardinal who flashes bright red. I am the junco who wears a gray coat. I am the wren who sings from the fence ...

  This poem comes from the recent archives. It was written in February for Laura Shovan’s 10th Annual February Poem Challenge. It is a respo...

  WHAT IF What if democracy does not exist in opposition, is not the weight on one end of the beam of our future? What if democracy is the f...

  This non-rhyming villanelle is a found poem, created with lines used both directly from and paraphrased from ALL WE CAN SAVE , mostly from...

The phrase "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" dates back to around 1976 , when Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to...

  Yesterday , my poem witnessed the insect apocalypse. Today, a different kind of witnessing. The kind that gives me hope: Spring is returni...

  From the essay, "Loving a Vanishing World," by Emily N. Johnston in ALL WE CAN SAVE: "It's a constant question for me e...

  DEAR GENERATION C, Covid, Carbon, and Climate will define you. Cohorts, Connections, and Community will unite you. Collaboration, Cooperat...

  GROUNDBREAKING Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells And pretty maids all in a row. M...

  KINSHIP Banana, Bonobo, and Bumblebee all share DNA with me! Hickory, Cherry, Birch, and Oak share DNA with me – no joke! Humans differ by...

  THE TRUTH is an obstinate drum beating a steady bass line of facts rattling a snare of reality setting the tempo  pacing the march for cha...

  Courage is hard work. As an individual, I waver. As a species, we are wavering. The earth will move on with or without us, but my greatest...

  WIND Wind: unseen powerful mover of air through the atmosphere, flung by earth’s rotation and sun’s uneven heating. Pollinator, turbine tu...

  The Thing Is contrails are pollution. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you but a sky crisscrossed by blazing pink lines lit by the r...

  MEND IT There’s a hole in my jeans too big to ignore. Should I throw them away and go buy some more? No, I think I will mend them with bri...

  DAILY ALCHEMY Out and in trees silently breathe, turning carbon into life: a living clean-air factory. Out and in trees silently breathe. ...

  THE DANDELIONS ARE WAKING UP The dandelions are waking up They’re stirring in their sleep They stretch their spiky arms up high And dream ...

  A SMALL PATCH it’s a small yard with a small garden and a small patch of milkweed it’s a small thing for a small creature this small patch...

  In the chapter "Reciprocity" by Janine Benyus in ALL WE CAN SAVE , she tells the fascinating story of an ecologist in the early ...

  SCIENCE IS Science gives us data Science provides the proof Information is the house Science is the roof. Science looks at details Science...

  The Thing Is to face a challenge, face it even when you have no stomach for it and you’re sure you don’t have enough strength, stamina, or...