Rereading The Heart’s Garden
The Garden’s Heart
By Kenneth Rexroth
has sustained me
through decades
His words continue
Almost unknown
Almost forgotten
But they are there
And re reading
Tears of recognition
of thanks and also of sorrow
What else have I forgotten
What else have I left behind
What else is there
To think
To do
To write
To paint
To believe
To remember
What happens to the environment
the earth
the forest
the birds
the plants
the animals
encased in layers of concrete
glass and steel
overwhelming the natural
yet doomed to failure
to falling
Thank you Kenneth Rexroth
Thinking about land
every day
The destruction
of Mother Earth
Thousands of hectares
every day
deforested in Australia
Trees cut down
Amazon burning
As one youth activist
quipped on a poster
The wrong Amazon is burning
I don’t even know
what a hectare is
I have never lived
on a farm
I have lived
in cities and towns
on six continents
Hiking in the bush
just outside town
I see parched earth
Erosion
like the deep cut
on my arm
But the cut was
sewed up
closed up
Now healed
Leaving only a slightly
pink and purple scar
How to heal the earth?
Some farmers know how
The earth can be renewed
But forcing the land
to yield immediate results
leads to
long-term destruction
Farmers becoming
delivery people
Tracking the Human: nobody's a long time 