Congratulations to the U.S. for our new Poet Laureate!

If you look on the right hand side of the page, at the list of books read this year, you’ll see Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind. I finished reading it some weeks ago, before she became the  twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate. [The link goes to Milkweed Press’ Limón page, which has a plethora of additional information about the poet and her poetry.] In honor of her selection, I’ve moved The Hurting Kind to the top of my reread pile. Snyder and Harjo can wait. Would that not enough time for reading were my biggest headache these days.]

The Hurting Kind, Ada Limón

Today’s temperatures and breeze were close to ideal for mowing the back yard. Weather and ancient bones and muscles permitting, we’ll get to the front and north side yards tomorrow. Our feral oregano has spread to several other spots in the yard. While it’s in bloom it looks pretty and smells nice. I’m trying to decide how much an aesthetic preference for mown grass is innate compared to an acquired taste.If oregano completely replaced the grass, could I skip mowing? Would I grow to like the look?

For some time I’ve been devoting an hour or more in the morning to reading poetry while drinking my coffee before I engage in chores such as mowing. I need to become as regular with my morning exercises, which I undertake with slightly greater frequency and regularity than mowing. Several of the poets I’m currently reading are not, I think it’s fair to say, nationally known. I’ve come across them in book reviews in outdoors or environmental magazines. Much of their work is based on rural living, hunting, fishing and living close to nature. That helps me appreciate all the more recent poet laureate projects such as:

• Harjo’s signature offering was “Living Nations, Living Words,” a digital gathering of poems and other materials by forty-seven contemporary Native poets from across the nation.


• [Tracy K.] Smith, in addition to launching The Slowdown, focused on editing a poetry anthology, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time (Graywolf Press, 2018), and a tour through rural America called “American Conversations: Celebrating Poems in Rural Communities.”

I’m looking forward to learning what Limón’s laureate project will be. Meanwhile, I suspect several of her other poetry volumes will find their way onto my “To Be Read” pile. If my suspicion is correct, that one won’t die with a great stack of books unread, I’m motivated to get all of Limón’s volumes, but past experience indicates I’ll also find other writers and topics I have to explore. The longer I live, the more I want to read and learn and know. That’s sort of like an expanding universe, isn’t it?

What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use

By Ada Limón

All these great barns out here in the outskirts,

black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.

They look so beautifully abandoned, even in use.

You say they look like arks after the sea’s

dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,

and I think of that walk in the valley where

J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,

No. I believe in this connection we all have

to nature, to each other, to the universe.

And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,

low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,

and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,

woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.

So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,

its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name

though we knew they were really just clouds—

disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

Who’s teaching whom?

Today’s posting is short and, I hope, sweet. There’s a new report from the United Nations that’s written about in The Guardian: Humans need to value nature as well as profits to survive, UN report finds. Now, it’s as obvious to me as not eating the seed corn that nature provides our life support systems and that the economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment, but apparently the report’s findings will come as news to a number of folks. (By the way, please note that the report is prominently linked above. The Guardian’s story failed to include a link to the report. Too many newspapers are not providing online links these days. Including links to reports that are the subject of the story should be mandatory in all journalism style guides.)

I’ve not read the UN report yet, but the reason you’re reading about it here is it talks about incorporating multiple systems of values in decision making. We need, I believe, lots more education and training in how to do that. Too much of the focus we have is on doing things efficiently with too little emphasis on doing effective things. Holistic decision making has become critical if humans are to thrive over the long term on a habitable planet.

shared resource, many users

Photo by J. Harrington

One example of more holistic decision making probably not cited in the UN report is from a local school. That report was recently published on the Agate web site: Creating a buzz at Chisago Lakes Middle School. Much of the report is about planting pollinator gardens.  The report’s author is a teacher at the school and “His students are known in Minnesota for fully funding an effort to put 44 solar panels on their school in 2008 with zero financial support from the school district. That project (Project Independence) morphed into the school owning or leasing 15,000 solar panels and saving 3-6 million dollars over the course of 30 years.” Apparently not all the local families are wearers of red seed caps stitched MAGA.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I had read about the solar panel project years ago and then forgot about it. It’s heartening and encouraging to see that students can and do exercise leadership on important things. They also set examples more (and more, and more) of our politicians should follow.

My Wisdom

By Naomi Shihab Nye

When people have a lot

they want more

 

When people have nothing

they will happily share it

 

*

 

Some people say

never getting your way

builds character

By now our character must be

deep and wide as a continent

Africa, Australia

giant cascade of stars

spilling over our huge night

 

*

 

Where did the power go?

Did it enjoy its break?

Is power exhausted?

What is real power?

Who really has power?

Did the generator break?

Do we imagine silence

more powerful because

it might contain everything?

Quiet always lives

inside noise.

But does it get much done?

 

*

 

Silence waits

for truth to break it

 

*

 

Calendars can weep too

They want us to have better days

 

*

 

Welcome to every minute

Feel lucky you’re still in it

 

*

 

No bird builds a wall

 

*

 

Sky purse

     jingling

           change

 

*

 

Won’t give up

our hopes

            for anything!

 

*

 

Not your fault

You didn’t make the world

 

*

 

How dare this go on and on?

cried the person who believed in praying

God willing     God willing        God willing

There were others who prayed

   to ruins & stumps

 

*

 

Open palms

     hold more

 

*

 

Refuse to give

   mistakes

      too much power

 

 

*

Annoying person?

Person who told me to stay home

and do what other girls do?

If you disappeared

I still might miss you

 

*

 

Babies want to help us

They laugh

for no reason

 

*

 

Pay close attention to

a drop of water

on the kitchen table

 

*

 

You cannot say one word about religion

and exclude Ahmad

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