The power of poetry to move us to action

To scoop a sea up in your hand -
Won’t make it drier.
For our souls, there’s only one
Heavenly fire.

One only breath, from lips to lips,
For all the people
One only fate, one only mile
For all creation

One myrrh anoints us, everyone
One single motion
And our days will flow away
A single river

In every grain, both flour and bread
Contain their essence
And opens wide a path for us
From earth to heaven.

Как море зачерпнуть в ладонь –
Не станет суше.
Один божественный огонь
На наши души.

Одно на всех, из уст в уста
Одно дыханье
Одна судьба, одна верста
На мирозданье

Мы мирром мазаны одним
Одной рукою
И утекают наши дни
Одной рекою

В любом зерне таится суть
Муки и хлеба
Тебе и мне торится путь
С земли до неба

Dear Natalya and Jonathan, thank you both for your different but equally moving poetry. What an honour it is to share this material on this blog.

When the time’s toxins
have seeped into every cell

and like a salted plot
from which all rain, all green, are gone

I and life are leached
of meaning

somehow a seed
of belief

sprouts the instant
I acknowledge it:

little weedy hardy would-be
greenness

tugged upward
by light

while deep within
roots like talons

are taking hold again
of this our only earth.

- CHRISTIAN WIMAN

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/poem/5942/

A FATAL MISTAKE by Edna Eglinton

The turtle was killed by a careless hand
three thousand miles away,
a hand that had crumpled a plastic bag
tossed it aside and left it to lie
in the grass on a cliff by the sea.

It blew on the wind out over the bay
and fell in the tidal stream
where the strength of the current carried it on
rolling and rocking through froth and foam
to the warmth of a faraway sea.

Sunshine expanded the air in the bag
till it floated on top of the swell,
like one of the crowd of jellyfish there
sparkling with colours of sunshine and air
afloat on the rollicking sea.

A hungry turtle swimming by
snapped it up in his jellyfish meal.
It stuck in his throat
and choked him — dead
in the middle of that sea.

Three thousand miles from that careless hand
a female turtle waits.
She has no fertile eggs this year,
no small new turtles will appear
in the sand by that lonely sea.

I love this poem by Matt Harvey - a serious message told with a light touch.

Less is More
Can less be more, can more be less?
Well, yes and no, and no and yes
Well, more or less…

More bikes, fewer cars
Less haze, more stars

Less haste, more time
Less reason, more rhyme

More time, less stress
Fewer miles, more fresh (vegetables)

Fewer car parks, more acres of available urban soil
More farmers’ markets, less produce effectively marinated in crude oil

Less colouring, more taste
More mashing, less waste

Fewer couch potatoes, more spring greens
Fewer tired tomatoes, more runner beans

More stillness, less inertia
Less illness, more Echinacea

More community, less isolation
Less just sitting there, more participation!

More wells (not oil ones, obviously), fewer ills
Fewer clean fingernails, more skills

More co-operation, less compliancy
Less complacency, more self-reliancy

Less competition, more collaboration
Less passive listening, more participation!

Less attention defic…, more concentration
Less passive listening, more participation!

(Less repetition)

Less of a warm globe, more a chilly’un
More of a wise world, at least 34 fewer parts of C02 per million

Less stress-related cardio-vascular and pulmonary failure
More nurturing quality time in the company of a favourite clematis or dahlia

More craftsmanship, less built-in obsolescence
More political maturity, less apparently-consequence-free extended adolescence

More believed-to-be-beautiful, known-to-be-useful things
Less cheap, pointless, petroleum-steeped stuff

So Yes, less is more – and enough’s enough…