Earth Day Thoughts

A poem and watercolors

When I think of the world my granddaughter will live in if we don’t save it, I fear and try to hope. I offer what follows with thanks to

Claudia Befu

and her Earth Day project with

Julie Gabrielli

and

Top In Fiction

with thanks to publisher Erica Drayton.

The losses may seem small but will be grand and devastating.

The Future of Nature” is an Earth Day community writing project for fiction writers to explore the human-nature relationship in a short story or poem. It was organized by @Claudia Befu and @Julie Gabrielli, and supported with brilliant advice from scientists @JDTonkin andand @betweentwoseas. Also @rebeccahooper. The thoughts and the poem you’re about to read is from this project. You can find all the stories as a special @TopInFiction Disruption edition, with thanks to publisher @EricaDrayton.

Here’s my hope:

School

Remember promise
in giant red doors
you saw
while your knees shook
at the edge of the playground
with book bag and lunch pail, cold
from the thermos of milk? The sound
of the future
in the creak of the bindings
of black and white speckled notebooks?
How hope smelled in the wood
of sharp yellow pencils?

Remember how long red
margins ruled
down the side of lined paper
you titled “My Summer Vacation”
and you learned
at hard desks
how to write
in narrow white spaces of weather, and clothes,
and long days at the beach—

not of skies bursting color
like peaches and plums
or birds’ feet on sand
like the sweetness of time.

watercolors by Mary L. Tabor

Love,

Only Connect, all sections, come from my heart and soul— If you’ve already gone paid, my heart goes out to you with my thanks.