Poetry and Earth Month in April

Petrified Forest near Holbrook, AZ; Photo Credit:  Lyn Fenwick

It has been my practice to honor April as Poetry Month at this blog, and I did so again this year.  However, April is also Earth Month.  This week, before April passes by, I am going to combine both Poetry and Earth Month with a reflection on the importance of our responsibility to respect not only the nurturing of our own spirit but also nurturing our planet Earth, ending the blog with a poem by a man who salutes trees.

Our planet is an Oblate Spheroid, or in plain words, a Bulging Sphere.  At the equator, Earth is 24,901 miles around.  It takes 365 1/4 days for earth to make a trip around the Sun, which explains our use of  leap year every 4 years to account for the quarter of a day needed to travel around the sun each year.

Canyon Wall: Photo credit: Lyn Fenwick

Seventy-one percent of the Earth is covered in water, but less than 3% of that water is fresh water.  Add to the limited amount of fresh water the limited acreage on Earth available for crop production of about 11%, with about another twenty percent considered mountainous, having almost no agricultural use and only limited use for grazing.

The oceans that cover so much of our planet influence the land through currents that affect temperatures, precipitation, and various ecosystems.  

Past and present-day Man impacts both water and land.  Arable land is lost each year through desertification and erosion caused by humans on both large and small scale.  Our ancestors contributed to the "Dust Bowl" of the Great Depression, and today the slash-and-burn deforestation of the fertile tropical rainforests  for temporary cultivation are resulting in infertile desert land.

Less dramatic than the massive burning of the Rain Forests but also a danger to our fresh water supply is something known as "freshwater salinization."  How is this happening?  Simple things that we take for granted may silently do harm.  As winter approaches, those responsible for keeping our roads safe acquire a supply of salt to use on the roads to melt ice and make travel safer during winter.  Most of us overlook the fact that the nearly 20 million tons of salt spread on our roads gradually end up in streams, rivers, lakes, and other sources of freshwater around the world.

Farmers are becoming more mindful of not only protecting their soil from harmful chemicals, as well as crops that deplete the soils, as once happened in the South from exclusively growing cotton.  Today's farmers are learning to respect science in protecting the soil in their fields.

Fossils from Texas

The evidence that our planet has not always been what we see out our windows today is all around us, although easy to ignore.  Some years ago, my husband and I toured the petrified forest, and the photographs I took of trees turned to stone, including the image at the top of this blog, are tangible evidence of those changes.  When we lived in Texas, I collected evidence that our back yard had once been the floor of an ocean.  Photo Credit:  Lyn Fenwick

Today, we realize that our precious Earth has been entrusted to us to preserve for future generations.  I do my silly part by transplanting the volunteer seedlings that pop up every year, planting then for future generations to enjoy their shade.  In an early blog, I shared the story of my unearthing the long root of a volunteer red bud from our English ivy bed.  The root was very long, and the hole I dug to plant that root had to be deep.  The rescued seedling, once planted, promptly dropped its leaves.  My husband and the carpenters who were doing construction at our farm teased me about my devoted watering of a dead tree.  As you can see from the photograph below, the transplanted seedling survived and bloomed beautifully this spring.

The memory of my tender care of the little red bud tree may explain my appreciation for the poem, "My beautiful Flowering Trees," by Asha Menon.

 

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

My Beautiful Flowering Trees

One day I shall buy some land
Plant countless seeds
And watch them grow
Into beautiful flowering trees

A cool breeze
Will bring me
Sweet fragrances
From a thousand flowering trees

I shall listen
To the songs
From birds perched
In the tall flowering trees

I shall play
With my children and theirs
In the vast expanse of green
Amongst beautiful flowering trees

One day I shall rest
Passing into oblivion
My ashes scattered
Amidst the beautiful flowering trees

By Asha Menon, Writer and Reviewer of Malayalam literature

Another source for poems reflecting on trees is The Afterlife of Trees, by Kansas poet, Wyatt Townley.  Townley was recognized as our Kansas Poet Laureate, 2009-2013, during which time she traveled the state doing readings of her poems.  I had the pleasure of attending three of those readings locally, in Kinsley, Pratt, and Cunningham.  Her books are available online.