Poem "On a Saturday in the Anthropocene" by American Poet Elizabeth J Coleman

ELIZABETH J COLEMAN is a poet, public-interest attorney, environmental activist, and teacher of mindfulness. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Swarthmore College, she practiced law for over thirty years, specializing in law in public interest, and has served as an executive at several organizations.

In 2012, she received an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She credits Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness for her decision to become a late-career poet.

In her most recent work as editor of HERE: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, Earth Day, 2019), Coleman brings together her love for poetry, for justice, and for our planet. Her poetry collections include the following:
~ The Fifth Generation (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016)
~ Proof (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014)
and two poetry chapbooks:
~ Let My Ears Be Open (2013)
~ The Saint of Lost Things (2009)

A vice president of the Poetry Society of America of New York City, Coleman's poems have been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She is also a member of the New York, Georgia, and Washington DC bars runs Mindful Solutions LLC and is president of the Beatrice R and Joseph A Coleman Foundation.

Photo Credit: Website of Elizabeth J Coleman

as I walk in the light of a two-rivered
island to my post office, I mourn

the last typewriter repair shop
in New York going out of business

mourn that this moves us further
from letters, from connection,

from writing home.
I mourn that it's so warm

monk parrots nest in Sheepshead Bay,
lovely as that sight is, mourn

what we've done to birds:
For 150 million years they saw

their reflections only in the sea.
Then I notice a fire escape

on a two-century-old building
casting a soft shadow I see wheels

on a bicycle that, like meditation,
seem to slow time. I remember gorillas

stay up all night to groom their dead,
and reading about a woman in Ohio

who gave every building in town
a new coat of paint after she was laid off.

At my post office, endangered too,

I avoid the self-service kiosks, wait in line

for a human. A clerk waves me over

with her smile, asks where I've been.

She tells me about a cruise she's taken

with her mother, describes the buffets,

The turquoise of the ship's pool.

Now I'm smiling too. What's your name?

I've been meaning to ask for ages.

Grace, she says, I thought you knew.

SOURCE: HERE: Poems for the Planet, Edited by Elizabeth J Coleman with Foreword by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Copper Canyon Press, Washington, USA, 2019.

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Elizabeth Coleman writes: "I was inspired to create and edit HERE: Poems for the Planet with the dream of galvanizing readers to address the environmental crisis head on, with enthusiasm and without the paralyzing fear that leads to indifference and inaction. My goal was to encourage a sense of urgency and hopegoal, and to reach those already engaged, and those sitting on the sidelines, in a new way. In HERE, more than 125 living poets from all over the world, explore our planet's beauty and plight. With a foreword from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and an activist guide written by the Union of Concerned Scientists, HERE summons our best selves to be catalysts for change."

AUTHOR ROSALIENE BACCHUS

Reaching minds and hearts through storytelling

POEM "ON A SATURDAY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE" BY AMERICAN POET ELIZABETH J COLEMAN

ON A SATURDAY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE BY ELIZABETH J COLEMAN

ON A SATURDAY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE continued