You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'nature' tag.
By Ashlee
A few weekends ago I drove with some friends from the Twin Cities to Chicago and saw a whole lot of humble farm land in between.
“Farming States”
Green pastures
Are what we are after
No more skeletal tractors
And burnt fields
Inside our nostrils will never heal
No more littered ditches
And a wool blanket that itches
Cover your ears now
The school bell is how
We know its morning
Leaving these Wisconsin farms
With our sunburned arms
We’ve swallowed enough dirt
For our throats to forever hurt
And to send us back to they city
Companion Poem:
“The Man Born to Farming” by Wendell Berry
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark?
By Ashlee
I have a slight fascination with piracy and admittedly have read far too many books about it. However, rarely are women mentioned unless of course they are mistresses of some sort but I would like to have been a pirate with the sea for my home.
“Pirate-Woman”
Rough hands so raw and so dark
Imbedded with grains of sand
And salt off the ocean
Wind scarred and earth toned
Hair so long and so deep
Gnarled and tangled
Teeming with dust and dirt
And smelling of the sea
Although her skin is worn
She knows you’re wondering
Where she gets that glow
Well, she used to be a pirate
And she buried all the gold
Beneath her skin
Sails that snap and sound
Like the distant drums
Of an unknown tribe
On a land full of treasure
I read this next poem while taking a literature class; it was coupled with another great poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Again, I like the theme of the sea, as in ancient times it represented a state of chaos.
“Break, Break, Break” by Alfred Tennyson
Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
By Ashlee
Harlan Hubbard was a painter and writer who lived naturally and apart from modern civilization, and lived a full and happy life.
“For Harlan Hubbard”
You, who abuse the earth
Who use what you do not love
You do not work the soil
Or feel the thorns
If ever you were outdoors
A machine is between
The ears and the birds
The nose and the fragrant foliage
The skin and the dust
Degrading yourself, your mind
With labor-savers
The modern world is far too small
In its extravagance they left no room
For the real, good, and natural
You use the world and its goods
Without consideration or love
Reducing creatures and all of creation
To ideas and monetary values
Buying packages
Boxes, cartons of product
Never eating food
You shall waste away
As your bones grow padding
And you skin stretches over
Spilling greed over your jeans
You who consume and take
What big companies put out
On the shelves, endless
Labor, overworked
And underpaid for your
Bargain, what a deal
What a steal
What a shame
Companion Poem: ”Modern Nature” by Andrei Voznesensky
Red cows
on the asphalt road have settled.
Lazing on the asphalt pan they lie.
We drive them round
for cows are sacred!
They are loyal to the highway,
we wonder why.
“Old herdsman, we want our question answered:
Why have the cows gone mad?” “God forbid!
The point is that flies do not like asphalt.”
Those modern cows! The are wise indeed!
They got it, the sly ones! Cattle of genius!
Unlike the poor, unfortunate flies.
“The flies know that asphalt
is carcinogenic.”
Those modern flies! They are really wise!
By Ashlee
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of poems by Sylvia Plath, who was the daughter of an expert on bees. She wrote a few poems on the topic (one of which is included here), and I too have been fascinated by these amazing creatures, which led me to write this poem.
“For the Bees”
I walk into the swarm
Of bees, whirring
Their entire bodies
Give the air electricity
My skin holds tremors
Yellow blinds while
Black bites
Faint and pinching
While the space between
My stomach and my throat
Fills with itching and sudden
White panic
I won’t let it escape
Or I will create a commotion
That will end with wounds
Red and full
So I remain stormless
As the syrupy wax
Lures my taste
Jar in hand
The queen bee feeds me
Fills me with her work
And I bow to her
And live like her
Demanding respect
For my golden honey
Companion Poem: ”The Beekeeper’s Daughter” by Sylvia Plath
A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,
A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.
Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,
You move among the many-breasted hives,
My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.
Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.
The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.
In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red
The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings
To father dynasties. The air is rich.
Here is a queenship no mother can contest —
A fruit that’s death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings.
In burrows narrow as a finger, solitary bees
Keep house among the grasses. Kneeling down
I set my eyes to a hole-mouth and meet an eye
Round, green, disconsolate as a tear.
Father, bridegroom, in this Easter egg
Under the coronal of sugar roses
The queen bee marries the winter of your year.
By Ashlee
This poem was inspired by the uncomplicated thoughts of childhood.
“Worldviews”
There’s something quite interesting
In how we have viewed the world
How when we were young
And unspoiled
We saw the world like the animals
Primitive and pristine
The toddler on the porch
Looks up and sees the stars
Each one glittering
And sees nothing else
That is not there
Then the father walks outside
And explains the constellations
Giving them names and
Elaborate explanations
The magic is gone
It’s all over from that point on
And that child will never see
The world the same way again
And he will infect the neighbor kids
Who still see the world
As their own playground
Companion Poem: “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
