KNAU listener and teacher Eileen Groom has this week’s installment of Poetry Friday. She is a self-described worrier, and has been thinking about the health of the earth and humanity during the pandemic. With new physical distancing guidelines changing the way we record interviews, Eileen sent us an audio file of her original poem Mother Nature’s Revenge.
Eileen Groom: I’ve always appreciated Poetry Friday and thought that I would send a recording of a poem that I wrote about a week and a half ago. I am a teacher, a remote teacher now.
I’m also a worrier. Of course what we hear now from everybody is to stay healthy. And I think all of what’s going on is very much connected to our earth staying healthy.
So, I entitled the poem Mother Nature’s Revenge. Here it goes:
Too comfortable, blasé even.
Unappreciative
Of the sunlight’s stripes on the wall
In the afternoon
Of the taste of a whiskey sour
In the evening
Of a tree budding so delicately
Dabs of lime paint
All the light and the glows
In the doorways that were never looked at before
Oh, my, that is pretty and oh, my, that tastes good
And oh, that would be the gift given to us
As the earth breathes in
And breathes out the last, oh, my
(Music: Moment, by Jeremy Warmsley)
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.