Tag: #Earthpoetry

All of us animals

After the birthing of the calf,

I wanted to hold her four-legged 

tipsy body in my arms, then 

leash her to me for what 

could be twenty years of life

rather than two or three

on a commercial farm. I wanted

to keep her with me so she would 

avoid all of the unsayable things 

we plot against cows.

Even before the calf’s mother 

sang in the pain of labor, 

even before the mother cow 

marveled at her own image 

in her new baby, both of their lives 

were set for human needs.

What I really want to say is this:

there are some animals we care for 

and some we do not. Of course, 

I include humans in this word animal.

Perhaps there is a way to see each other 

with love in all of us, in our eyes, in our fur, 

in our hides, in our muzzles, on our hooves, 

watching the sky and Earth, smelling 

the air for the coming winter.

-Liza Wolff-Francis

If I were, I am

If I were a forest, I would breathe 

right now, while there’s still time.

I would spread my leaves 

like a lusting after sky. I’d reach 

my shapes, my shades of green 

and gray to blue and cloud, 

to light, to illumination, 

to all we dream this life to be.

If I was a river, I would call 

to snow down the shaded land, 

welcome it to my body, 

to my frontier of wet and quench. 

I would sing a hopeful melody 

into tunnel of tongue and throat.

If I was the earth of Earth, the soil, 

dirt, sand, or loam, I would sift 

through the air, fly whirlwinded

to river, to lake, to ocean. 

I’d be unafraid to take space, 

to move with the breeze. 

I would remember I too am nature 

and nature is of me, my body 

of water, the dusty dirt shedding 

of my skin bark is part of the song.

-Liza Wolff-Francis