We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

6.6.20

Hello Earth #6

Hello Earth

Here I am, just after breakfast, still sipping my coffee, indoors but looking out at the clear, sunny day — while knowing it will be cold out there. I haven’t yet switched off the heater I had on all night.

Earth, you need the seasonal changes, I suppose. Or are they inevitable, and so all your life forms adapt? No other choice. It’s all part of something very much vaster than us (even than you, Earth). I’m glad of human curiosity, which has brought us what little understanding we have.

Leaning in, I think a blessing on science and scientists. Overall, over time, they have shared their discoveries generously. I’m equally grateful to the great mystics for sharing theirs – and to be living during a time of quantum physics, when the two kinds of understanding more and more meet.

Listing gratitudes, I acknowledge I’m fortunate to have lived when and where my birth and my life put me. The privilege of a pale skin, an affluent society, an education, a beautiful environment. Finding the like-minded.

Offering gratitude to Fate, or God, or whatever we call that (Goddess... Universe...) I offer it most of all to you, Earth our Mother. And then to this land, Australia, which has my heart — its many different landscapes, their stories, and the way they all speak to us if we can be still to watch and listen.




Written back in June when it was still Winter in Australia. Shared, as we enter Spring, with Poets and Storytellers United at Writers' Pantry #36.

20 comments:

  1. during a time of quantum physics, when the two kinds of understanding more and more meet..... I've been thinking and reading along those lines too and it's quite fascinating...

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  2. We’ve had some of those chilly but clear sunny days recently, Rosemary, as we slip into autumn, with lots of red berries in the hedgerows, usually a sign of a hard winter to come. I like the way you ponder on seasonal changes, which are definitely inevitable, although they seem to be melting into each other with climate change. I’m also glad of human curiosity – without it we wouldn’t be aware of everything around us.

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  3. Love your contemplation's I have the same gratitude and especially the beautiful environment . I haven't been to Australia yet but have a friend in Sydney so one day.

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    1. And I, alas, have never got to New Zealand, though I have a brother who lives there. In photos it looks very beautiful indeed.

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  4. This is a really beautiful letter to Mother Earth. I especially like the listing of gratitudes.

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  5. I love how this hello builds and ends with such gratitude

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  6. Australia is indeed one of the best countries in the world to live where we welcome requests for the most part from people from all over the world so long as we know you're coming with the right credentials. However I do feel sad about the first peoples, the aborigines who are quite often scorned for choosing to live their own traditional lives.

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    1. If only we – from the earliest colonists to the present day – had the intelligence to learn from the people who understood how to manage the land here in ways that respected and nurtured all life.

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  7. Love how you talk to the Divine. Time to turn the heater back on, soon.

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    1. Ha, I have just had one night where I was able to leave mine off.

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  8. As we're just leaving (slowly, slowly) the hot part of the year, this calls winter so clearly it makes me just take a breath and be thankful for the season as well. This form builds to the gratitude so well, giving the reader a chance to experience and then share some of that feeling of well-rooted thankfulness.

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  9. i love this poem. we must not forget, and be grateful to Mother Earth for giving us the air, water, land and food.

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  10. Enjoying your Hello Earth discourses
    Happy Sunday. Stay Safe.

    Much💝love

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  11. We are lucky, aren't we? To be able to imagine--both the good we can get and bad we can try to avoid (or, at least, survive). I love the closeness of the voice, the way I feel like I'm sitting in the same room where the speaker and spilling her bit into Gaia's ear... and she's listening.

    I, too, am eternally grateful for the like-minded.

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  12. Beautiful words of praise and love to your homeland!

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  13. I also try to remember to be grateful for the seasons for reminding me to find the beauty in changes. It makes it a little easier to put up with some of the more extreme aspects of them.

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  14. So many things we take for granted for which we need to be grateful. BTW, have you ever read the Cree (native American) legend Warriors of the Rainbow?
    https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/WarriorsoftheRainbow-Cree.html

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    1. No, but I'll certainly find and read it now; thanks for the recommendation and the url.

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  15. The part I like most is, "I’m glad of human curiosity, which has brought us what little understanding we have." People as a whole thing we know a ton, but honestly the more I find out about the natural world and its vastness and complexity, the more I realize we do not know and probably cannot know.

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    1. True, I do believe there is much we can never know, e.g. it seems there are colours which our human eyes are incapable of seeing. However it's fascinating to try and discover as much as we can.

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