We Did This

 

image by Yasser Mokhtarzadeh via Unsplash

Early Morning in the Anthropocene

 

photo via Adrian Pelletier on Unsplash

Peak Colors

 

Wordy 30 Poems

 

A Wordy 30 is a poem using exactly 30 letters. Each line should have the same number of letters. Each line should use one word. You might have 6 lines with 5 letters in each line (like Wordle), or 5 x 6, 3 x 10, 10 x 3, 15 x 2, 2 x 15, 30 x 1, or (most unlikely) 1 x 30. Mine are a 5×6 and a 6×5.

Radiant Spendor

 

Radiant Splendor

Chrysalis comes from Greek.
“Chrysos” means gold.
A diadem is a crown
perhaps worn by a monarch, 
who is a king, queen, emperor,
or butterfly.

The diadem
of a monarch’s
chrysalis
is adorned with
flecks of flashing gold:
breathtaking effulgence.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

A definito is a free verse poem of 8-12 lines (aimed at readers 8-12 years old) that highlights wordplay as it demonstrates the meaning of a less common word, which always ends the poem.

photo via Unsplash

I'm Just Calling Things What They Are

 

Four of us Poetry Friday Peeps read and discussed THE HURTING KIND one section at a time in August. It was the best #sealeychallenge activity ever. We got more out of this book with a slow read and deep conversations than we ever would have by plowing through it in a day and checking it off our to-do list.

If you haven’t read THE HURTING KIND, I highly recommend it. Here is the book trailer with Ada Limón reading the final poem in the book.

This is a cento I made with almost all of the poem titles in the second section, Summer. The words in italics are the only words I added.

Equations

 

The striking line, “You can’t sum it up. A life.” comes from the poem “The Hurting Kind” from the book THE HURTING KIND by Ada Limón.

The poem itself, in response to Margaret Simon’s gorgeous photo, is a “This Photo Wants to Be a Poem…” poem.

The photo is via Margaret Simon.

Six Strands

SIX STRANDS

I.
summertime clothesline
sun-bleached swimsuits and towels
functional design


II.
taming tough jute
	knot
after follow-the-diagram 
	knot
precisely forming each
	knot
every creation now
	lost
to time. Unraveled.


III.
Simplicity patterns and fabric on bolts –
Orth’s Department Store –
a place for dreaming.
Later, pinning pattern pieces –
cutting carefully –
no place for dreaming.


IV.
counting cross stitches
design emerges slowly
meticulously
time-lapse with needle and thread
if you follow the pattern


V.
The Conundrum of Patterns

They are everywhere.
They are beautiful.
They teach discipline.
They limit creativity.
They encourage innovation.
They connect us.
They are thread;
we are needles.


VI.
pull
one thread
at a time
to unravel
the apron string's knot --
a tangle of patterns,
precision, and perfection.
Examine each beautiful strand.
Make them into something wholly...you.


 

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022 

To Be Human Is To Bear Witness

 

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 acorns
And glaciers are melting
And panels are absorbing

Dandelions spread rampant joy
And wildfires are raging
And coal plants are shuttering

Hummingbirds return all abuzz
And extinctions are accelerating
And bald eagles are rebounding

This world within a world within the world
And all the excruciating truths
And every glimmer of hope

To be human is to bear witness.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

My Chlorophyll Heart

 

My Chlorophyll Heart

I’m for photosynthetic optimism –
the bulbous kind you plant in the fall
in spite of squirrels who dig ruthlessly
and urban deer who nibble indiscriminately,
the kind that seed packets hold through the winter
believing in butterflies and hummingbirds
before they’ve ever known sun and rain.

Here’s to the blazing green energy of plants–
from the toughest blade of crabgrass
to the most tender spring ephemeral,
from the massive trunks of riverbed sycamores
to the tiniest pond-floating duckweeds.

I’m for the plants –
for the roots who go about their work
silently, mysteriously,
collaborating with mycorrhizal fungi.

And I’m for the leaves of trees –
especially sweet gum’s stars
and ginkgo’s fans.

I’m for the way we share the air with plants –
us breathing out, plants breathing in.
I’m for the generous chemistry of leaves,
combining carbon dioxide with water and sun,
creating carbon building blocks for itself, then
sharing the extras back into the soil for the microbes.

What moves me?
What plays me like a needle in a groove?
Plants.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

This poem is an attempt to write in the style of Taylor Mali. The poem I used as my mentor text is Silver-Lined Heart.

Nature Has Something To Say

 

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 have rights, too.

Save my neighborhood.
Save our lake lives,
our woodland and wetland lives.
If your corporations have legal personhood,
so should we.

We are alive.
Do not treat us as property.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

"Threatened by development, five bodies of water are suing the State of Florida, making the unprecedented argument that nature has legal rights, too." -- Does This Water Have Legal Rights?

Mary Jane and her twin, Lake Hart, along with two other local waters and a marsh in Orange County, Florida have filed a lawsuit that would protect their neighborhood. Shifting the legal system to recognize personhood is not new. We did it to recognize slaves, women, children, corporations, and Indigenous people as citizens. Ecuador, Columbia, India, and New Zealand are leading the way with earth law. Shouldn't we ALL be on board?

What I Know About Farming

 

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 ate everything on his lunch tray,
even the orange peel,
and we laughed at him.

When I was a teen,
I babysat Phil and Mary Sue’s irrigation,
monitoring the pump and the furrows.
Their corn was lush and tall and impossibly green.
The water was pumped up from the Ogallala Aquifer,
which is geologic water.
When it’s gone, it’s gone.

When I was a young adult,
my father died of lung cancer.
He had been an ag pilot,
drenching himself and the farm fields below his plane
with toxic chemicals,
not realizing he was causing
silent springs.

When I imagine the farms of the future,
their workers are valued.
They grow crops appropriate for their climate.
They give life, rather than taking it.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

Looking back, it's astonishing to me that I grew up in a farming community that had been ravaged by the Dust Bowl years, and yet I learned nothing about the Dust Bowl, or what caused it, in school. Groundwater and the Ogallala Aquifer were not a part of our science curriculum. 

My dad's cousin Bob insisted on using dryland farming techniques rather than succumbing to both the allure (and cost) of irrigation, as well as the government subsidies that funded crops requiring irrigation. But he was an anomaly. 

Eastern Colorado is again in the midst of a severe drought, with dirt storms that last all day and reduce visibility to under a mile. I understand the enormity of shifting our agriculture system from huge agribusinesses to farms that are responsive to the land and climate. I understand that "huge agribusiness" can mean "land accumulated by families over many generations" and change can seem like an attack on a way of life. I understand. I am hopeful that change will come from the farmers and landowners.

Collard Green Seed Savers Give Me Hope

 

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 section of ALL WE CAN SAVE titled "Nourish," there are essays about Black cultural ties to the soil, and the need to reimagine agriculture so that we can save our vanishing soil and protect our (mostly Hispanic or Latinx) farm workers. Large industrial farms need to be replaced by smaller farms and more robust home gardens. More people need to get their hands dirty raising their own food. If we are intimately connected to the soil, or to the seeds and their history, as the members of the Heirloom Collard Project are, we will be more invested in saving the whole planet.

Let's Talk

 

Let's talk. Let's talk about the wildfires there and the flooding here. Let's talk about the decreasing numbers of butterflies and bees in our gardens. Let's talk about solar energy and Green policies. Let's talk to Indigenous people, whose deep ancestral knowledge of the earth can teach us so much about conservation and ecology. Let's stop ignoring what's going on and work together to change our trajectory.

Ode to the Minuscule

 

Ode to the Minuscule

To worm castings –
bubbles of fresh soil,
froth of loam.

To beech’s leaf buds –
tightly wrapped
bronze spikes.

To Squirrel Corn –
your heart on your sleeve,
treasures hidden at your feet.

To Harbingers of Spring –
salt and pepper
of the forest floor.

To gnat –
the first Trillium Grandiflorum
is all yours.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

This Earth Day weekend, I traveled to South Bend, IN to celebrate the life of April Pulley Sayre. On Friday afternoon, between rain showers, April's husband, Jeff, took us on a wildflower walk through April's favorite woods. All but the worm castings were sighted there. Those I spotted as we walked to Lake Marian Island before the luncheon on Saturday. 

During the memorial service, I jotted this note about April's belief: we can "...change the world by changing the way we look at it." Yes, we need to look at the big picture. Yes, we need to give everything we've got to reversing the warming of our planet. And yes, we need to seek out and appreciate all of the tiny intricate wonders of the natural world.

The photo of worm castings is via Project Noah, and the beech leaf bud is via Wikimedia Commons. The others are photos I took on Jeff's nature walk.

earthworm castings

beech leaf bud

Squirrel Corn

Harbinger of Spring ("Salt and Pepper")

Trillium Grandiflorum (can you spot the gnat?)

Urban Wildlife

 

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 diving and calling back and forth right above the garden and nearby neighborhood. It was magical. 

Just as magical, but also gruesome, was the sight we came upon week before last as we pulled out of the alley behind the Clintonville Resources Center after doing our pick-ups and deliveries of donations to the food bank. There, where the alley met the street, was a Cooper's hawk, valiantly mantling over a pigeon nearly his/her own size.  The pigeon was squirming, and the hawk was having a hard time making the kill. A delivery truck turned onto the street from the alley across the way, and it was too much for the hawk. It flew away. I used a plastic-bag-covered hand to move the pigeon up into the yard, in the hopes that the hawk would come back, finish the kill, and have a meal.

City hawks give me hope. We are losing lots of species, but some are adapting to life in urban environments. These wild neighbors are precious to me.

Earth Speaks

 

EARTH SPEAKS

My
oceans
are dying.
My forests are
cut down or burning.
My systems are weakened,
and my glaciers are melting.
So many species are extinct.
How can I convince you to help me?


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

Today, Earth Day 2022, I'll pass the mic to Earth and let her speak.

At the Bird Feeder

 

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
with a body so small and a voice so immense.

I am the hawk who swoops overhead.
I am the crow who caws an alarm.
I am the silence – all have dispensed
till the robin comes back and breaks the suspense.

I am the cardinal who again flashes red.
I am the junco who fluffs his gray coat.
I am the wren back atop of the fence
with a body so small and a voice so immense.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

I saw a quote from Lisa Congdon on IG yesterday:

"Be a joy monger."

Delving deeply into the realities of the climate crises has severely depleted my stores of joy and optimism. But yesterday was a rare day without rain (one of our local climate changes is more frequent and more extreme rainfall) and it looks like perhaps we've had the last freeze. So out to the garden I went for some joy mongering. I cleared the beds of last fall's oak leaves and looked for hidden signs of spring. My notebook lay open on the porch, and is now full of joy, and smudged with mud and notes for future poems.

Section 6 in ALL WE CAN SAVE is all about the emotional and psychological toll of the climate crisis and its work.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

 

This poem comes from the recent archives. It was written in February for Laura Shovan’s 10th Annual February Poem Challenge. It is a response to the Chicago song by the same title. Here it is performed by the cover band Leonid & Friends, which is comprised of musicians from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus who have never heard Chicago perform live.

What If

 

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 fulcrum,

holding everything in balance?

What if democracy
is a force of nature
equal to gravity, symbiosis,
evolution, and tides?

What if democracy
is a synonym
for love?


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

"Inequality and climate change are the twin challenges of our time, and more democracy is the answer to both." --Heather McGhee, p. 91 in ALL WE CAN SAVE

I fear the loss of democracy with the same panic-inducing terror that I feel for our planet. But my belief in science and in the power of love is greater than all of my fears, and those beliefs are what help me to have hope for our future.

Culture Change Work Is Climate Change Work

 

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 essay “Harnessing Cultural Power” by Favianna Rodriguez. The lines can be found on these pages:
278, 125, 123;
125, 124, 278;
125, 125, 123;
126, 126, 278;
126, 127, 123;
127, 127, 278, 123.

Three Rs Times Four

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

More recently, the second three Rs (plus a couple more) came about. 

Worthington, the area of Columbus two streets away from where I live, is holding a Pre-cycling Day on April 23. Their three Rs are the third set. 

I invented those last three Rs, because the foundation for meaningful and lasting change on our planet will have to come with a cultural shift -- we must "Create culture to challenge consumption."

"Imagine the power of being exposed to an abundance of stories, songs, and images that challenge our fundamental consumption culture and expand our perspectives by helping us feel the consequences of our choices. " p. 125-125 in ALL WE CAN SAVE

Our culture of unlimited consumption and unbridled consumerism simply has to go. 

Loveliest of Trees

 

Yesterday, my poem witnessed the insect apocalypse. Today, a different kind of witnessing. The kind that gives me hope: Spring is returning, and the redbuds are in bloom. 

I distinctly remember the first time I saw a redbud blooming. I was walking across the OSU campus after a spring rain. At first, I was amazed to hear the sound of water being sucked into the ground! But then a small tree near the sidewalk caught my eye and I could NOT believe what I saw -- there were blooms coming right out of the bark on the branches! In that moment, redbuds became my favorite spring tree. 

A.E. Houseman's Loveliest of Trees is one of my favorite spring poems. I have it memorized, and I recite it every spring to remind myself to witness this season of rebirth as if it might be the last one I ever see.

"...loving this vanishing world feels like a kind of prayer sometimes." p.263-264 in ALL WE CAN SAVE

Witnessing the Insect Apocalypse

 

From the essay, "Loving a Vanishing World," by Emily N. Johnston in ALL WE CAN SAVE:

"It's a constant question for me every time I'm entranced by the beauty of this world: What does it mean to love this place? What does it mean to love anyone or anything in a world whose vanishing is accelerating, perhaps beyond our capacity to save the things that we love most?"

Here's the 2018 NYTimes article about the insect apocalypse that's been haunting me for four years.

 

Dear Generation C

 

DEAR GENERATION C,

Covid, Carbon, and Climate will define you.
Cohorts, Connections, and Community will unite you.
Collaboration, Cooperation, and Citizenship will move you.
Capitalism, Consumerism, and Colonialism will be Constrained by you.
Compassion will guide you.

Your Challenges are Colossal.

We Cede to you a world in Chaos,
but seeded with Cautious optimism
and the saplings of a Conservation Culture.
It’s not much,
but we’ll Continue to Cultivate all the Changes we Can.

We’re Cheering for you! Be Courageous!

Love,
The Baby Boomers, Gens X, Y, and Z, and the Millennials


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

Today's poem was inspired by ALL WE CAN SAVE and also by Seth Godin's newsletter "Seth's Blog." In it, he wonders,

"So what to call the next generation?

My co-authors Bruce Clark and Paige NeJame have coined the term “Generation C.” It’s so well-suited, I believe it’s going to stick.

C is for Covid, C is for Carbon, C is for Climate."

I agree. I think it will stick. Generation C it is. Now let's work to make the changes necessary to keep the global average temperature rise below 1.5° and let's arm Gen C with all the skills and attitudes they will need to carry through to the next generation.  

Groundbreaking

 

GROUNDBREAKING

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

Mary, Mary, now organic,
What’s in your garden soil?
A humble creature, long and thin
Not asking much as it toils.

Mary, Mary, worms are essential,
Their tunnels aerate the earth.
They mix soil layers, help decompose:
They make the terra less firma.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

I love earthworms. They are amazing creatures who do such essential and often overlooked work.

Yesterday was one of those after-a-day-of-rain spring mornings when the sidewalks were covered with worms. I must have tossed two dozen back into the grass during my walk. 

There's an excellent chapter on soil in ALL WE CAN SAVE: "Solutions Underfoot," by Jane Zelikova.

Kinship

 

KINSHIP

Banana, Bonobo, and Bumblebee

all share DNA with me!

Hickory, Cherry, Birch, and Oak

share DNA with me – no joke!

Humans differ by a tenth of a percent.

We’re exactly the same, for all intents.

Each life is connected in this way –

with common strands of DNA.

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

“Science has finally confirmed that human beings share genes with all living organisms.” p.20 in ALL WE CAN SAVE

What could be more hopeful than realizing that we’re literally all in this together? And what could be more anxiety-inducing to remember that one species has caused – and needs to repair – all the problems on our planet?

The Truth

 

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 change.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

Jane Hirshfield, in her poem "On the Fifth Day" writes about the attempt to silence the truth. Spoiler alert: the truth cannot be silenced.

Or

 

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 hope is that humankind will have more courage than cowardice to do what’s best for our planet.

The quote in this poem's striking line can be found on p. 30 in ALL WE CAN SAVE.