I’m reading and listening to ALL WE CAN SAVE: TRUTH, COURAGE, AND SOLUTIONS FOR THE CLIMATE CRISIS.
My poems this month will be inspired by the essays and poems in this book, and by this gorgeous living planet we call home.
Sometimes I get a panicky feeling about our future, but I’m trying hard to hold onto hope and to the actions I can take, no matter how small. It is not too late to turn things around, but I can’t sit on the couch waiting for someone else to do something.
Throughout the week, I’ll be posting at Poetrepository, but I’ll do a mini roundup here on Fridays.
Today’s poem does double-duty. I challenged the Inklings to write a poem using The Thing Is by Ellen Bass as a mentor text. I wrote a couple of drafts, but when I fully processed that this poem would need to introduce my NPM project, it was back to the writer’s notebook to draft again.
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings interpreted my challenge:
Linda@A Word Edgewise
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly@Nix the Comfort Zone
Catherine@Reading to the Core
Margaret@Reflections on the Teche
Heidi has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at my juicy little universe. Happy National Poetry Month! Let the flood of poetry begin!
A(nother) Year of Reading 
I am loving your poetry project and what a wonderful opening poem. I share those feelings of inadequacy in the face of such a huge climate crisis. Hope is a verb, a muscular verb. Superb!
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What an inspiring project, Mary Lee! I look forward to reading your work. Love thinking about hope as a muscular verb – we need it to do a lot of heavy lifting.
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I have loved reading everyone’s poems in response to your prompt. “Hope is a verb.” Wow! That is powerful.
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I like “Hope” as a verb, it’s inspiring and powerful! And full speed ahead with “wind farms,” concrete alternatives, more trees, and “justice and equity”–I’m all for making these become reality!
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I think it is unanimous, Mary Lee. Hope is a verb, a strong verb with enough durability to lead us to a sustainable future.I look forward to reading your NPM collection.
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I love this, Mary Lee. Such a difference between the passive “hope” and the “hope” that inspires action, attitude change, and actual change.
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Amen to your post and to these comments! Looking forward to your (& Heidi’s) poetic takes on our very real world/environmental challenges this month. Thanks for caring enough to make an NPM project on this theme.
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Brilliant, like always! I love the idea of hope as a superhero verb and can’t wait to read more of your poems. Have you read Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams book about Hope. She talks about hope as action and she also has four basic tenets about why she has hope and one is about climate change and the resourcefulness of the natural world. If you haven’t already read or listened to it (Jane reads the audiobook and it’s terrific!) I think you would enjoy it.
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HOPE is my favorite four letter word. Hope coupled with action is the only way we are going to survive. I am looking forward to reading your brilliance all month. 🙂
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Yes, Mary Lee, hope has to be a verb. That’s a very useful way to view it. “We all can save . . . ” sounds like an inspiring book and I think I need to read it. I look forward to reading more this month.
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Brilliant! I love seeing all the different variations on this prompt from your group. I keep thinking about “sunflower in a siege.”
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What a fabulous take on the prompt. I know that panicky feeling you write about. I have it when it comes to conflict between nations. The whole notion that our world is suffering war still and again makes me so stinkin’ mad. If we all could tone and grow muscles that you write of this world would be a different place. I just want to say, AMEN to your poem.
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I *love* this line: “Your hope must be a verb”
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I thought I had commented, but here I am reading your wonder of a post again. Maybe that was the plan, clicking on the post & having the pleasure of reading & nodding ‘yes’ then ‘yes’ again & again. A solemn hope with muscle beneath is so needed. Thanks, Mary Lee.
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Brilliant! Just love this poem, Mary Lee. Beauty balanced with hope.
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Yes! “Hope must be a muscular verb.” Here’s to finding ways to “lead us to a sustainable future.”
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Your revisions here fill out the poem’s physique with the required muscle! “more than a bird in a storm or a sunflower in a siege”–what gorgeous symbols; now can they do the work of hope? Oh wait–WE have to do the work.
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“your hope must be a verb/a muscular verb/a rugged superhero verb” < Yes, Yes, and more Yes!!!
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Here’s to writing poetry for muscular children with superhero hope to write policies grounded in justice and equity!
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