Earth day? Earth night?

Yesterday we touched on the importance of relationships. I also intended to share a wonderful web site I recently discovered when searching for information about Joe Paddock, an oral historian, environmental writer and poet, I decided that might be too much for one post and so, saved it for today. Have you heard of John Caddy, poet, naturalist and teacher? He lives sort of down the road, in Forest Lake. I have one of his books of poems.[click the cover for more]

His web site is Morning Earth. It celebrates the Confluence of Art and Ecology. It also, to close the loop, has a page about Joe Paddock. I now have two reasonably real models to help me formulate how I want to spend much of my time during retirement, which starts next Tuesday. Sometimes life is better than one has any reason to expect it to be. With all due respect, Robert Bly is more than I'm prepared to be. John and Joe seem attainable, so to speak. They make me think of Thomas Smith, with whom I've taken some classes at The Loft and who I saw again about a year ago at an environmental writing seminar at the Audubon Center of the North Woods. These folks are members of a community to which I aspire and would be proud to be accepted as a member. John's Morning Earth site also has some very impressive education pieces that help us learn ecology. I wish knowledge of fundamentals of ecology was required to graduate from high school. We, and the world, would probably be far better for it. Jane Yolen (another kindred spirit?) shares similar thoughts in this poem.

Earth Day

By Jane Yolen

I am the Earth
And the Earth is me.
Each blade of grass,
Each honey tree,
Each bit of mud,
And stick and stone

Is blood and muscle,
Skin and bone.
And just as I
Need every bit
Of me to make
My body fit,
So Earth needs
Grass and stone and tree
And things that grow here
Naturally.

That’s why we
Celebrate this day.
That’s why across
The world we say:
As long as life,
As dear, as free,
I am the Earth
And the Earth is me.

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