“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer in BRAIDING SWEETGRASS
When I chose this quote for the Poetry Sisters’ June challenge, I felt its truth in my bones. Yet, when I sat down to write a poem inspired by it, I fought hard with its ideas (as the pages of notes and thoughts in my notebook will attest).
There is SO much wrong with our world. We have DONE so much wrong TO our world. The problems seem insurmountable. How could there ever be any semblance of wholeness again when we’ve obliterated entire ecosystems, coral reefs, and rainforests? Not to mention the damage done by industrial agriculture, strip mining, offshore oil rigs, and fracking. (This would be the weeping part of the quote. Or perhaps more accurately, the wailing.)
And yet, scientists and entrepreneurs are discovering and advocating for all kinds of innovative ways to heal our lands and waters and air. There is hope. But will it be enough, and in time?
What is the impetus, the motivation, the “doorway” that moves someone to work to save our plant? The cynical side of my brain says, “Well, duh — it’s money! Money and power. Nothing will change unless there’s money to be made and power to be secured.” But the optimistic side of my brain whispers, “No. It’s love. Love really is the answer: love of a place and its plants and animals is what it takes to inspire someone to save it.”
Ultimately, the whispering side of my brain won, and I found a poem that skews towards simplistic, maybe poem for children.
Love Really Is the Answer The world is broken. We have done it. No dissembling – we must own it: global warming mass extinctions plastic pollution deforestation. Damage done; blame accepted. Now next steps: how to fix it? Many challenges: multiple solutions. Some are obvious, others unproven. Proceed with a love that fuels all decisions to save species, biomes, habitats, and oceans. Love your yard, your street, your city. Love with science and responsibility. Love takes commitment, collaboration, and work. Exactly what’s needed to repair our Earth. ©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023
Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Irene has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Live Your Poem.
BONUS BOOK REVIEWS
LITTLE LAND
by Diana Sudyka
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2023
review copy is mine (because I loved it so much I had to own it!)
If you have admired Diana Sudyka’s illustrations for Joyce Sidman’s and Liz Garton Scanlon’s books, you will fall head over heels for LITTLE LAND. It has everything: gorgeous details in the cover and endpaper illustrations AND the book’s cover has a different illustration from its dust jacket. On the back of the dust jacket is the book’s Big Idea: “Do you know a little bit of land? No matter how big or little, you can take care of it. And when you give love to something, it will give back to you.”
The book begins with the geological history of a “little bit of land.” It is a history of the land’s change over time. But then, “…some change does not belong to the land. It belongs to people.” And we see how people have covered the land and taken from the land until the balance is tipped and change seems unstoppable. (two GORGEOUS and heart-breaking page spreads here)
But even when things seem unstoppable, unrecognizable, and beyond repair…with help and care, life and land can find a way…
The way out of this mess is reclaim our connection to the land. Sudyka even paraphrases Robin Wall Kimmerer’s important ideas about reciprocity in her author’s note: “…Earth has always shared its gifts with us and…we need to give back to it in return.”
Love really is the answer.
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If you’re more in the mood for adult books on this theme, I recommend these, by Camille T. Dungy:
I’m only a little ways into this memoir, but I’m loving it! Readers can follow Camille’s journey in transforming her homogenous Fort Collins, CO suburban yard into a heterogenous haven for native plants and all kinds of pollinators and birds. Here’s a quote I loved:
Whether a plot in a yard or pots in a window, every politically engaged person should have a garden. By politically engaged, I mean everyone with a vested interest in the direction the people on this planet take in relationship to others. We should all take some time to plant life in the soil. Even when such planting isn’t easy.
p.10
Camille is the editor of this book of poetry that makes a fabulous companion book to round out your reading! (And which was a gift to me from today’s PF Hostess Extraordinaire, Irene Latham! Thanks again, Irene!!)
A(nother) Year of Reading 