the savor project
we grow the good and play with our food
the earth is a living thing
Some days I need poetry just as much as I need the garden. I’ve read a little of Lucille Clifton but in a new book I recently ordered – “Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry,” edited by Camille Dungy, a whole new world of words has opened.
The following poem is in this book and can also be found here.
the earth is a living thing
is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea
is a black hawk circling
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded
is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal
is a black and living thing
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair
feel her brushing it clean
Lucille Clifton (1936 – 2010)
the savor project 