Greetings Earthlings

Steve van Matre, author of Sunship Earth and various other environmental literacy books, once said that “greetings earthling” is the best greeting we can use for fellow humans since we are all residents of planet earth. I give this greeting occasionally, but many times people think I am joking. Environmental quality is no jike, but it seems to slip away daily despite our best efforts.

On the good news side, I have another book scheduled to launch this fall with November first as the tentative launch date. Walnut Street Publishing will take charge of the design, printing and distribution. I will preview some of the poems on September 7 at the Chattanooga Public Library’s Chattanooga Author’s Fair. All events take place at the downtown branch.

Here is a draft outline of the day: 

Registration- Lobby 8:00-10:00
Tabling- First and Second Floor 9:00-3:00
Speakers- Auditorium and 4th Floor 10:00-3:00
Kids Crafts- 2nd Floor 1:00-3:00
Keynote Speaker- Auditorium 2:00-3:00
Author Social- Auditorium 3:00-4:00

My friends at Chattanoog Audubon will offer the 2024 version of Coosa Chiefdom Day at Audubon Acres this Saturday. This event celebrates the early inhabitants of the Little Owl Village site on the Audubon porperty.

I have not written any new poems since becoming sick with COVID in July, but more will come soon. I have cut up numerous old magazines and wildlife calendars and made several new collages. Here is an older poem to end this week’s missive.

For the Last Carolina Parakeet

I imagine the loneliness of your aviary 
there at the Cincinnati Zoo where your 
predecessor, the last Passenger Pigeon 
flew off to oblivion just a few years earlier. 
One voice is not a choir.

You were part of a social species, 
descending by the thousands, 
on fields to consume cockleburs, 
or orchards for luscious fruits. 
One voice is not a choir. 

Some labelled you a pest 
and pursued with shotguns. 
Audubon noticed your species 
in decline even in his bygone days.
One voice is not a choir.

No welcoming song of your fellows 
greeted your waning days. Does your
skin adorn a museum, just as your 
ancestors’ feathers adorned lady’s hats? 
On voice is not a choir.

It saddens me to think my adopted home
of Tennessee once knew the calls and colors 
of a native parrot. One scientist titled 
an article about your kin, “Forever Gone.”
No voices remain in the choir.