Tara Campbell
Heed the Green
Our ancestors knew the Earth would burn, the stars would bleed, it
would all come undone. Save the Green, they said. They knew one day we’d need it.
Our children don’t yet know the velvet bliss of moss between their fingers,
the feathery gleam of fields of it; nevertheless, we teach them how to feed it.
We show them how to care for Green: water, nutrients and soil.
They’ve heard the lesson so often they could lead it.
They know one day they’ll sit, eyes closed, Green in their laps,
listening for its wisdom. In time, they’ll learn to read it.
And it will teach them how to care for our new planet,
as it would have done on Earth, if only we had known to heed it.
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Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse. She teaches flash and speculative fiction, and is the author of two novels, two hybrid collections, two short story collections, and a chapbook of sestinas. Additional publication credits include Eye to the Telescope, Star*Line, Electric Literature, CRAFT Literary, Uncharted Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising.
Author’s Backstory/Crafting Elements: I’m a member of CODEX, an online writing and general support group for writers of speculative fiction. The group organizes various challenges, including a poetry challenge, which is where this poem originated. One of the weeks focused on form poetry, and I’d always wanted to try a ghazal. I’d also been researching fungi and plant life, and admiring how resilient it is, if given a fighting chance. The repeating lines of a ghazal seemed to mirror plants’ ability to spring back after challenges, but also humanity’s propensity to forget past lessons and continue destroying the environment. These themes coalesced into a plea to remember the importance of the green around us.
Editor’s Comments/Image Credit: I found this eco-poem even more sobering when I listened to Louis Armstrong’s song “What a Wonderful World” while reading the ghazal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBrd_3VMC3c) Image credit: “Save the Earth” photo (Magnific) is combined with green butterfly background (Pinterest) using PowerPoint.