Taking a quick break from my posts on Italy to share a special afternoon of poetry organized by Notable Works Publications and the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. My poem, “Here on Earth” was published in a collection of poetry that speaks to the connection between the human and natural worlds.
I took part in a reading on June 11 at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s beautiful wildlife refuge in Bristol. This was very special to me because it gave me a chance to visit the East Bay Bike Path, which is right off the refuge, and where I biked for years when I lived in East Providence.
Here on Earth
After viewing “Where Children Sleep:
Photographs by James Mollison,”
an exhibition at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum,
New London, Conn., February 14, 2023
https://www.jamesmollison.com/wcs-copystand
Shhh! Mother Earth cradles kids
on a street corner in Rio de Janeiro,
in a tent made of cattle hides in Kenya,
in a room where corn is stored in Nepal,
on a mat with 21 other orphans in Thailand,
outdoors on a piece of carpet in the West Bank,
in a bed shaped like Cinderella’s coach in Kentucky.
Shhh! Mother Earth sings a lullaby
to Roathy, asleep on old tires in Phnom Penh,
to Ahkôhxet, whose Amazon tribe worships the sun,
to Juan David in Medellin, dreaming of life in America,
to Lamine, bone-tired from harvesting maize in Senegal,
to Alyssa, in a shack heated by a wood stove in Appalachia.
to a Romanian boy, counting stars on a mattress near Rome.
Shhh! Mother Earth cries alone
for landfills that seep lethal black liquid,
for mountain quarries stripped night and day,
for skies seething with smog and city high-rises,
for once green fields pockmarked by bomb blasts,
for human-made quotas and hate-filled boundaries,
for a vanishing tribe that still reveres nature, here on earth.
Julia Meylor Simpson
Second prize
Voices of the Earth: The Future of Our Planet III
Notable Works Publication
http://www.notableworks.org
Between Land and Sky 