In honour of Earth Day, I offer you a compilation. Here are wise words of great thinkers, mystics and poets, woven between poems of children and the wonder of the Earth seen through their eyes and art.
This Sacred Sunday, may we join the hearts of our ancestors and our children in a prayer for Mother Earth, thank you for holding us this long, may we find our way beyond our clumsiness and greed, our narrow views that we’re somehow other than you. May our deepest sanity be found, such that we hold you back and have your back.
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money." -Cree Indian Proverb
“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness.” -Khalil Gibran
Earth Dancer
Earth, if you are the land,
then I am the dancer dancing with you,
my toes tickling your nose.
I am the dancer
I dance all around
I am the salmon
You are the water
I am the salmon who fly in the air,
I am the salmon who dance up the waters
I am the dancer
I dance all around
I am the bird who dances in sky,
Oh, look at me fly!
I am the dancer
I dance all around
I am the turtle who goes oh so slow,
But if you look closely you'll know
that when I do move I'm doing a dance.
I am the dancer
I dance all around
I am the frog that hops on a log,
Oh, look at me! I'm dancing along.
I am the dancer
I dance round and round
I am the stars that dance in the night,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
I wish I might dance all this night.
I am the dancer
I dance round the round
-Sara R. 9yrs. old
“The earth is a fine place and worth fighting for." -Ernest Hemingway
Ice Storm
Outside it looked like Mother Nature
was having a bad day.
The snowflakes were her tears.
The ice was her pain.
And she was blaming us.
-Christopher S. 10yrs. old
"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." -John Muir
"After a visit to the beach, it's hard to believe that we live in a material world." -Pam Shaw
YESTERDAY
I saw a redwinged bird
chasing a hawk.
The hawk was gliding
through the sky
like he was walking
in thin air.
The redwing said he was cool.
He can drill through the hawk
like a daffodil stem
drills through to the sun.
-Darius A. 7yrs. old
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." -Chief Seattle, 1855
"Earth laughs in flowers." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
THE EARTH'S LAUGH
Hear the heart pound
against the Earth's floor!
As it laughs around the sun,
Earth moves,
Look at it dance
around the sun!
Earth started laughing
at its dancing,
Can you hear it?
It laughs around you!
Hear the heart pound!
The wind will
blow you away with
the sounds of Earth's laugh!
-Teresa D. 11 yrs. old
"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." -Khalil Gibran
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more."
-George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
THE WILD DANCE
Dancing, dancing,
everything dances -
The wildflowers dance
for the beauty,
Beauty dances
for the wild living animals,
All the animals dance
for the wilderness green,
The wilderness green dances
for all the living people -
But the living people don't dance
for the wilderness green,
So the wilderness green may not
dance for long
-Andy B. 10yrs. old
"Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are." -Osho
"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems." -Rainer Maria Rilke
SONG FOR SPRING
Spring, sing to me the birth
of sitting on a fence,
a blue jay's calls,
the soft touch of a rose petal
sing to me quietly the croak of a frog,
the excitement of life,
the glow of growing
Spring, sing to me of
the energy of life,
the noticing of bright-colored clothing,
the birth of rain and puddles,
the wonderful moisture in the air,
the urge to hunt.
-Chelsea P. 7yrs. old
"Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea." -George Carlin
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." -Gandhi
CIRCLES
My blood makes a circle
Through my heart.
Earth makes a circle.
We of Earth are one part.
-Tommy J. 7yrs. old
"There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet." -Brooke Medicine Eagle
"Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself." -Henry David Thoreau
Earth
Earth,
if I am the bird,
Then you are the birdhouse I nest in.
Earth, if you are the soil,
Then I am the flower growing from you.
Earth, if you are the tree,
Then I am the oxygen coming from you.
Earth, if I am the fly
Then you are the lizard swallowing me.
Ivan R., 8yrs. Old.
"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." -William Shakespeare
"You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet." -Hal Borland
Earth is excellent
And with many plants
Round and round it goes.
The earth is dying
Help it now !
-Joe, 8 yrs. old
"The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it." -Gertrude Stein
"To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug." -Helen Keller
"The tulip and the butterfly
Appear in gayer coats than I:
Let me be dressed fine as I will,
Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still."
-Isaac Watts
OVER THE WHOLE WORLD
up in the sky
on a rock
over the big blue water
across the deep valley of trees
I stood-tall and full, like a mast-head of
a special ship, one that was alive.
I felt the earth move
around my body as I lay sinking into its love,
satisfied by caresses the wind gave me freely
all day the sun felt warm
and I sat on the edge of the cliff
dangling my feet over the whole world
playing an imaginary flute, the music
around me, sun warm and the river below
twinkled and quivered, showing off
rainbow patterns in its waves and flow,
sparkling like a wet Milky Way.
-Jenny P. 15 yrs. old
"Man's heart away from nature becomes hard." -Standing Bear
"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in." -George Washington Carver
I LIKE THESE THINGS
I like the color of Medicine Lake,
and the way you move so free.
I like the chirping of the frog
I hear but do not see.
I like the way the geese fly high,
the geese so high and free.
-Mary H., 7yrs. old
"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back." ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982
"I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup." ~Wendell Berry
CONNECTED TO OUR MOTHER
If you understand Nature,
The deer will eat from your hand.
The sun makes the plants,
Animals eat the plants,
The humans eat the animals,
and Earth needs the humans to take care of it.
So you see, as you stare
into the endless sky,
we live from our Mother Gaia's birth,
and if you understand Nature,
The deer will eat from your hand.
And we all, plants, animals, humans,
are children of the Earth.
-Maria D. 10 yrs. old
"I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes." -E.E. Cummings
"Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another." -Juvenal, Satires
Earth,
You are a leaf,
I am the treefrog that will sleep on you.
When I hide, I will hide under you for safety,
When I get caught, I will come back to you,
When I die, you will be my grave where I will rest in peace.
-Taylor S. 8 yrs. old
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars." -Walt Whitman
"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." -Lao Tzu
"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." -Albert Einstein
"Watching clouds roll by
on a sunny day
Who needs church?
Nature is divine."
-Carrie Latet
LIGHT
A seed dances into a trunk,
A trunk dances into a branch,
A branch dances into a twig,
A twig dances into a leaf,
A leaf dances into light,
The light dances all over Me!
Can't you see?
The tree is growing
Just like Me!
-Trameisha G., 10 yrs. old
"There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough to pay attention to the story." -Linda Hogan
"Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price." -Napoleon Hill
RAINSONG
Raindrops are singing with clouds,
And when there are too many singers,
they all break away and start to fall.
Now, raindrops are singing on children's tongues,
singing on lakes, on rivers, on oceans,
on roof tops, on cars, on umbrellas,
on tree tops, on plants, on little tiny shoulders,
heads, on every little blade of grass.
Finally, when all of the singers have fallen,
it all dries up. The raindrops go back up
in a secret elevator, and sing with the clouds again.
-Caitlin D. 10 yrs. old
"Once you have heard the lark, known the swish of feet through hill-top grass and smelt the earth made ready for the seed, you are never again going to be fully happy about the cities and towns that man carries like a crippling weight upon his back." -Gwyn Thomas
"A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule." -Michael Pollan
Light!
There is sun on the clover,and sun on the log.
Sun on the fish pond,and sun on the frog.
Sun on the honey bee and sun on the crows.
Sun on the washline to dry the clean clothes.
-Alice F. 8 yrs. old
"Nature is the art of God." -Thomas Browne
"Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God" -Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Today I have seen a mountain sleeping.
It has a blanket of clouds just ready to burst,
to rain as hard as it can
refreshing everything.
-Vanessa 10 yrs. old
"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
-Gaylord Nelson founder of Earth Day
