Dlbrown• Show poetry

*My love of words, and poetry, meshed with deep reverence for nature, fills me with inspiration.. but also, I fear for the eco-system of Earth as man breaks her a little more every day, and money takes a front row seat watching her diversity being swept away. Hopefully the reins of greed will be pulled back just in the nick of time.



"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." (Chief Seattle)





The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

(by Mary Oliver)



"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."

- Walt Whitman

"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children."

- Audubon

"You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush."

- John Burroughs

"What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse." -Edward Abbey

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools." -John Muir

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction."

- Rachel Carson

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

- Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet

"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." -Cree Prophecy

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - Nature Conservancy's -John Sawhill

"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers."

- Joseph Wood Krutch

"For 200 years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death."

- Tom McMillan

"Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away."-Stephanie Mills

"Love is a powerful tool, and maybe, just maybe, before the last little town is corrupted and the last of the unroaded and undeveloped wildness is given over to dreams of profit, maybe it will be love, finally, love for the land for its own sake and for what it holds of beauty and joy and spiritual redemption that will make [wilderness] not a battlefield but a revelation."

- T.H. Watkins

"The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a boundless ethic which will include the animals also."

- Albert Schweitzer

"What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected."

- Chief Seattle *