Warrior Poets

 
 
 
 
 
From Motherly Musings: Jen Eddy is a poet, artist, an ordained priest of Melchizedek, and a teacher who delights in using her talents to help others expand their awareness of their surroundings and understand their mission in life.

She has chosen spiritual awareness and a fanciful nature to soften her teachings. She has had articles and poems in Dire Elegies, Poet Talk, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Celebrate Your Divinity, many anthologies, some online websites, and has delivered several summer sermons at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester.

She and her retired husband live in Webster, New York. Their two daughters and other family members live in California.

 
 
 
 
 
Spider webs flash silver lines
across dark green shadows.
Sunlight slants hot promises
through leafy branches,
spotlighting insects dancing
their short lives away.

I sit swinging my feet
on a flatbed truck parked
beside a dirt road,
listening to the woods,
inhaling sweet summer morning
smells.

A truck pulls up, on its back
a heavy bulldozer bursting at chains.
Released, the ‘dozer grumbles to life,
noses down the ramp,
lumbers into the woods
pushing brush and brambles,
ripping evergreens by the roots
to reveal violated forest floor.

diesel fumes and dirt billow.
Clatters, shrieks and throbs
kill the early silence.
The sun clears the treetops.
Men sweat heavily.
Behind the behemoth
crushed fern, bruised spruce,
uprooted cedar, cleat-chewed
ground. Smells mingle.

The ‘dozer spreads earth
like frosting. Contours flatten.
Where once old logs lay,
decaying base for lichens,
lizards and pungent fungi,
all scattered.

It departs,
clanking across the road,
climbing onto the truck,
an obedient beast
tethered with stout chains.

Dust settles.
Birds return to warble evening songs.
We survey the silence,
walk the curving slash in the woods
and dream of living close to nature.

Jen Eddy
July-August 2006 Earth First!