April is National Poetry Writing Month.  As such, along with some of my fellow PGM bloggers, I’m participating in the poem-a-day challenge with much delight.

Friday was Earth Day.  I spent some time over the weekend cleaning up out at my beloved family farm in Ohio.  Since the 1870’s my ancestors have been tending the land and in recent months, my siblings and I have taken the lead in stewarding the place.  Here’s to all the places in our lives that we love and take care of.

22 Earth Day

A dove in the window box
would not leave her dovelets
in spite of the hailstorm
in spite of my noisy rummagings
in the leaves below next morning.

I found my father’s hoe dropped last
season, some lovely morels
a tuft of yellow fur, I found wasps
at work, worms
and breathing dirt.

This well-loved patch of earth,
tended by my grandfathers, mothers ,
children, fed and sheltered us
was cleared and grew in
wild again each spring.

I walked the western edge
of what’s left of these ancestral fields,
squinted to see the new shape to tree lines
Dad planted and think of us all
covered by the wing of a

world, both fragile and strong
fledging into unknown transits
but held in place in an ordered
chaos of returns, of departures,
gatherings in and lettings go.

Beth Lodge-Rigal