5 Perfect Poems to Celebrate Earth Day
Discover the Beautiful Power of Nature Through These Inspiring Poems
Gotcha! There’s no such thing as “Perfect,” except for you. You’re perfect.
5 Perfect Poems to Celebrate Earth Day
1. "Living On Earth" by Alex Dimitrov
Where would you find love if not on the Earth?
As if we should be permitted elsewhere.
As if we understand our own wars,
our reasons for fleeing, forgetting—
the history we do not allow ourselves to imagine
and the lives we refuse to know,
which are often our own. I think of you here,
where you haven’t been in years.
There’s a flaw in the wood of the door
or my own madness that welcomes the wind
although it is summer, although I am winter.
2. “Origin of Planets” by Jennifer Foerster
We will walk the trail
until it turns to sand
and wait at the spit’s edge, listening
to the breakers, the seagulls
as they chatter their twilight preparations.What we won’t understand
about the sound of the sea is no different
than the origin of planetsor the wind’s crystalline structures
irreversibly changing.The albatross drags her parachute
over the earth’s gaping mouth.
3. “Climate” by Meghann Plunkett
Now I understand my childhood
home. Releasing shingle after shingle
into the brutal air. Our front door
torn and flat in the yard. Violent
gusts whipping through the marshes—
the back of your hand.
Of what I have unlearned
this was the hardest.
4. “Incremental Change” by Alish Hopper
Plants are music. Music is music, too. A bridge is music, and not only because it sways. A bridge has teeth. I like that though—don’t be too gentle with me. The German word for “always,” more like, “eternally.” Got two in my pocket, give away three. A cult, a conundrum, a cul de sac; into faith, and out again. Where everyone says they want to move to, but don’t, because sooner or later, you’ll lose your shirt. As if politics were not laundry. Flour, soda, eggs—what rises. The other end, the part that gets forgotten, soft and pink as an eraser. I walk into a room, I walk out of a room; the mirror catches me. The mirror tells, but who is listening? A strike, a march, a protest. Like a message, with a bouquet
left by the door.
5. “Notes from a Climate Victory Garden” by Louise Maher-Johnson
Remember: Everything is connected.
Everyone lives downstream and downwind.
Reimagine: Deep conservation, cooperation, and community.
Rebalance: Nature with nature. Mimic her. Sense her. Be her.
What do you think? What poems would you add?
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver
“Our goal is a decent environment in its broadest and deepest sense.” — Gaylord Nelson