Eco-Poetry for Earth Day

How serendipitous that Earth Month and National Poetry Month occupy April together.  Here are some selections of eco-poetry I wrote for Earth day.  A pair of haiku, and a longer poem. These were inspired by time I spent at the Wesley Retreat Center in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Haiku 1

If you sit quite still

Turtles emerge one by one

Log-perched and sunning

Haiku 2

Turtles with heads raised

Alert, shells shining; I move.

Quiet splash. Bare log.

Recognition

Wind throws cascades of bright shards across the water,

as if she held a clutch of diamonds

and cast them sheening across the surface.

A thousand lights spraying

like skipping stones across the lake.

They glitter in undulating ripples

then wink out

like shooting stars flashing in a night sky.

Here, wind has no need of me.

Light plays on water without caring if I watch.

And yet I do,

As dark-winged swallows dart and dance,

tiny kites without strings.

What am I to them

as they dip and rise

chasing insects on the wing?

And yet.

Here.  I am.

I simply am.

My holy vocation,

to watch and care and wonder and write.

here am i. ami.

Leah D. Schade is the Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary (Kentucky) and author of the book Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology, and the Pulpit (Chalice Press, 2015). She is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA).

Twitter: @LeahSchade

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeahDSchade/.

More of Leah’s poetry:

Black Raspberries: A Summer Poem

Nature’s Last Gold is Green: Autumn Tribute to Frost

315 Today: A Poem about Gun Violence

And here is an exquisite poem by one of my Patheos colleagues, Roger Wolsey, entitled  EarthMamaGaiaGoddess.