At my house
the wind whispers in the pines
rustles through the oaks and cedars
and sets the chimes gently ringing.
A zebra swallowtail floats over raspberry plants.
A blue and black striped dragonfly
darts above the clover
where a thousand bees hum.
A pale blue damselfly lands
on a bright orange marigold.
A tiny California newt
no bigger than my pinky finger
makes its slow little way
among the stones.
A million insects whiz by
in a million different directions
hummingbirds sip from the feeders
and ravens fly overhead
their wings iridescent in the sun.
Frogs and crickets sing their longing for mates
lizards and squirrels madly chase their own kind
hawks shriek and jays argue;
all is green, green, green
against sky of blue, blue, blue.
Down by the river
the air is full of the fragrance of
California buckeye blossoms
and spice bush flowers
and a billion billion green leaves
each a different shape and size
each a factory, photosynthesizing
each one growing toward the light.
The songs of robins, grosbeaks,
tanagers, and towhees
echo through the trees
over the sound of the river
swollen with snowmelt
roaring down the canyon
and the smaller trickle of the streams
flowing down to the river.
At the sides of the trail
green mosses ferns and grasses
are adorned with wildflowers
of every color:
larkspur and yarrow
paintbrush and monkeyflower
Ithuriel’s spear and blue-eyed grass.
This world is so beautiful
that I almost can’t stand it
but somehow I find I can
and I weep
for those who do not even see it.
I weep for their terrible loss
of which they are not aware
because their hearts are so tiny
or so burned or so poisoned or so closed
and I weep for the power we have given them
to destroy all that is sacred and beautiful.
Beloveds—
let us take it back.
That is all we must do to save this world.
Let us take
our power
back.
When I am out here in the hills,