Confession time: I'm no poet. I've dabbled in poetry — the old-fashioned rhyming variety — but it's been decades since I had a poem published. I've embedded poetry in short fiction and novels from time to time, where it seemed to fit, but I'm more prosaic than poetic. However, recent hikes through wild places in my home state of Michigan (like the Huron-Manistee National Forests, stretches of the North Country National Scenic Trail, and the pristine paths that crisscross my beloved Kalamazoo Nature Center) inspired me to craft a poem that captured the serene beauty of the natural world blooming all around us...and what we risk losing if we don't act wisely in the near future. This thought haunted me, planted a mental seed that germinated into something I felt compelled to share. So here we go: I hope it speaks to you, on some level, as it spoke to me while I labored to weave it into verse.

GOLD AND GREEN

I wrap myself in folds of gold and green:

The fabric of the forest, stitched with sun.

Midsummer gilds the leaves unfurled between

The tangled boughs, spills dappled light upon

Moss, sedge, and bracken carpeting the ground.

This hidden trove — too often lost — is found.

I celebrate the music of the trees:

Cicadas' chorus, songbirds' serenade.

Wind whispers undulating harmonies

While one woodpecker's drumbeats spike and fade.

The croaking frogs, the scolding squirrels, enhance

The symphony that makes my spirit dance.

I sniff the subtle perfumes of the wild:

Damp earth, pine resin, mint, decaying wood.

The fragrance of the forest has beguiled

My senses; hints of honeysuckle could

Complete this magic spell by Gaia cast.

My clouded mind finds clarity at last.

I wrap myself in folds of gold and green...

But, sometimes, such shades bloom from bitter seed:

A crop that withers every woodland scene

With green of naked commerce, gold of greed.

If — wantonly — we drill and mine and burn,

We fuel the fire of our cremation urn.

The profit motive drives economies.

But we must take all costs into account:

The bounty of the meadows, fens, and trees

Enriches us beyond the raw amount

In any balance sheet. When will we learn

That, eating Earth, we spend more than we earn?