An anonymous passerby,
someone on their way to work,
perhaps some bicyclist,
took the time to remove the cat,
hit by a car in the night, from the roadway,
place it in the ditch among wild violets
before more tires, feasting crows
and other agents of decay
could begin their work on the carcass;
a small kindness, this,
to foster a measure of dignity
during these times of anonymous death,
unmarked graves.

Mother Gaia hears each tiny drum
shudder out of rhythm, then stop.
She gathers fallen wings,
heavy as earth.
These wings are her burden,
the stones she must carry
in the pockets of her daydreams.

Mother collects fish eyes at low tide,
picks through night's deposit of death
on oil-stinking sand.
She fills a fruit jar with eyes,
blind, no matter where they look.
These are the eyes
that allow her to see in water dreams.

Mother is a beautiful bag lady
who collects bleached bones, teeth,
human tongues and turtle shells.
Squirrel tails and rabbit ears
bring a smile to her fingers.
Eagle feathers flutter into her grasp.
Gaia gathers the skins of poets and thieves.

No one knows of Mother Gaia's nights,
where she sleeps,
much less the quilt made of stones and straw
in which she wraps herself, heartsick,
grieving as only a planet can.
She offers herself to the sun each dawn,
a lover she knows will eventually **** her
in his embrace.

*A quote from Frances Phillips in her review of Linda Hogan's "Climbing a Rope Ladder".

Carmelita and Maria
burn with sorrow dressed as anger;
fire in their black-diamond eyes,
hot enough to scald tears
before they roll down
the brown lands of their faces.
Both quiver like chamisa in the dry wind
but the pride of long-suffering roots
will not concede to any withering wind.
Carmelita and Maria
are born of the same stubborn stone
as the ageless mesas around Coyote,
though pain carves arroyos in their souls.
As even the desert Rio Chama overflows
when the thirsty earth
cannot drink the rainstorm fast enough
and brings flowers in sand,
Carmelita and Maria will not admit it,
not to one another or to themselves,
but both long for the desert inside them
to blossom after the winter,
to be the sun,
each to the flower that is the other.

Mending my leather mittens
for the third time this winter,
I sew them with waxed string
made to repair fishing nets,
hoping they’ll last
until the splitting maul rests
against the shrunken woodpile
and the *** and ***** come out of the shed.
I find myself praying.
Blessed be those who have laced together
the splits at the seams of this world,  
repair its threads of twisted waters.
Blessed be those who stitch together
the animals and the land,
repair the rends in the fabric
of wolf and forest,
of whale and ocean,
of condor and sky.
Blessed be those who are forever fixing
the tear between people and the rest of life.
May we all have enough thread,
may our needles be sharp,
may our fingers not throb or go numb.
May each of us find an apprentice,
someone who will take the needle from our hands,
continue all the mending that needs to be done.

A romantic realist such as Thoreau
or a magical realist such as Garcia-Marquez,
unable to fend off fate
or rain
might say to a tree
thank you for allowing me to ****** you
to put a roof over my mortal head.
To which a cynical but congenial tree,
as valuable as a metaphor
as it is as a roof beam, might reply,
that though I, with my brothers and sisters
gave you every breath you’ve ever breathed
you murdered me for momentary expediency
and possess the audacity  
to write your poems on my dead skin.
Well, breathe as long as you can,
you romantic **** ant fool.
I’ll be a roof beam a hundred more years.
You’ll be nothing more than evaporated tears.

Larry Schug