Illumination Special Projects | Gaia

Poems for Gaia

We live on a beautiful planet that we often take for granted. It’s unfortunate that we have chosen a relationship where we constantly take from Gaia, instead of giving back.

I write a lot of poetry and nature is one of my favorite topics.

When I think about giving back to the planet, I think about compost, the dark messy rotting composition, full of worms, working their magic. Worms eat all the veggie peelings and scraps you put in your bin and their castings (a polite way to say worm poo) is essential manure that feeds the earth.

The phrase ‘feed the earth’ always reminds me of this quote from Into the Heart of the Country by Pauline Holdstock:

“And I see all the world of people for what it is. A long ceremony to feed the Earth.

We dance on it, feed on it, walk on it, and hunt and shit and love on it. And then we die upon it letting our flesh add to its’ crust so that new things can crawl there and dig and nest. It is not a hard thing.”

• Disclaimer — the above quote came from my notebook of ‘quotes that I’ve loved’ and so I can’t attest to its absolute accuracy.

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The Fibonacci numbers or Golden Ratio are a pattern frequently found in nature.

They are a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the previous two numbers in the sequence. For example 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, 34, 55. This sequence continues into eternity.

I’m fascinated with numbers and logic so this concept, applied to nature appeals to me even more.

I wrote this poem about the underlying math of things.

View at Medium.com

For a delightful explanation of the Fibonacci Numbers, here’s a short video where Hank introduces us to the most beautiful numbers in nature.

When you are alone in the woods Waldeinsmkeit describes the feeling of solitude in nature.

German is a fascinating language. I took a couple of years in high school. A lot of words are compound words and this is one of them: “wald” meaning forest, and “einsamkeit” meaning loneliness or solitude.

 

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