Morning Earth

Morning Earth

YA/adult poetry
"My Earth Journal is a celebration of Earth's daily gifts. For
me it is a daily daybreak practice--if you will, a devotional
practice--a way of integrating myself with the whole of life. It lets
me know each day that I belong to something infinitely larger and
older than myself. It is a path to intimacy with nature and an
awareness that we are the conscious part of Earth. We are Earth
regarding itself."
You'd probably think that, being a poet, I'd be a big poetry
reader. If so, you'd be wrong. I find much of the genre to be too
pretentious, abstract, formulaic, or just plain dull for my taste.
Unless a poem is evocative, unless it engages my senses and/or
emotions, it leaves me cold. John Caddy's Morning Earth: Field Notes
In Poetry was one of those extremely rare verse volumes that so deeply
moved me that I read it cover to cover.
Caddy realizes that people aren't moved by generic abstractions
like nature. It's individual insects, trees, and chipmunks that grab
us. Unfortunately too few of us make the time to make the intimate
discoveries that would enable us to fall in love with the rest of
creation. [reviewer's note: especially when so many of us walk
around with our eyes glued to those ubiquitous tiny screens]. He
wanted to enable and empower people to connect with the realm of
nature around them and develop a sense of belonging in its intricate
web. Each morning he writes a piece and sends it, unedited, to
hundreds of people (including teachers who share with their classes)
on four continents.
In Morning Earth Caddy shares excerpts from a years worth of
pieces. Each consists of a poem and comments that anchor it in a
larger context. One beautiful sharing was written September 20. The
poem reads:
"The white horse lets me caress his face,
enormous bone behind his skin,
this great round of jaw.
I rub between his ears,
slide down and stroke his nose.
He whuffs out at me:
Hot air from a bellows wide."
This observation follows;
"Touch other lives as you can. When a cousin of any kind allows me to
touch, I am honored. One way to ensure our humanity is to caress
lives that are not themselves human."
On May 21 the poem reads:
"In bright sun
the indigo bunting
flashes in,
lands on a white tulip,
bends it for a breath,
and flies."
It's followed by this observation:
"Be careful when you look up, for you may be ambushed by joy. So much
takes place in instants."
The morning after I read Morning Earth, walking across the
UMaine campus, I had a close encounter of a crow kind and tried to
describe it:
He stiff leg walks
Across the grass,
As awkward on the Earth
As graceful in the air.
His head moving
Backward and forward,
On the alert, searching, seeking.
He stops, tilts his head,
Gold eye appraising me,
Still as a statue
Until he seems to decide
I'm not a predator
And hobbles on his way.
Something beneath the grass surface
Lures him to pause
And begin a frenzy
Of pecking and swallowing.
Caddy would like the poem I shared part of as well as the fact
that I watched the bird and shared my observations. He hopes readers
will do just that. Throughout the book he tries to demystify poetry
writing. He even has a section of helpful suggestions.
"One of my goals with the Earth Journal is to practice a
transparant poetry that is simple and accessible. People respond to
it, I suspect, because we all hunger for news of Earth and reassurance
that wild exists. My hope is that the Earth Journal helps readers and
students know that they are part of the community of life, from which
our culture often divorces us."
Amen, brother!
On a personal note, and now to the antithesis of nature: the
computer. It's like the great white shark in Jaws: every time I
start to feel safe it pops out of the water showing its teeth. Anna
and a dude did a manditory training for student dining services
workers on stuff like customer service and food safety. Anna told me
I have to do five computer trainings with tests every year I stay in
dining services. She gave me a paper that might have been written in
Latin. (I'm all for trainings. But would it have killed the powers
that be to provide a paper version for those of us who didn't cut our
teeth on electronic devices?) Fortunately before my mind went into
full panic mode I realized Jodi would help me. And when I emailed her
she replied she would be happy to help me.
Great big shout outs goes out to Jodi for being one of the kindest
people in my life and Anna and the dude for creating and arranging a
very useful and interesting training. Did you know that food
thermometers need to be calibrated regularly?
jules hathaway



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