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WHAT IS ECOPOETICS? >link< Literary Theory and Criticism THE RETURN The Return Blue hills rise from the fog in the pre-dawn light Our skin pricked cold breath hanging like words best forgotten This is the true homecoming We know the bedrock here like our own bones felt but not seen except in times of disaster We left regret behind in the last village clinging to the cliff's edge like a gnarled, salt-stung tree Remember how you said you didn't like to travel but if getting there is hard it makes arrival that much sweeter Here the sheep and cows are anything but domestic wild, shaggy, ruffled with eyes like coal embers storm-blasted, hawk-harried, they're no easy kill We leave the car by the side of the road and walk into the lifting fog leaving footprints in wet grass We climb until we can barely stand Looking down we imagine the curve of the earth We can feel moss growing between our toes feel the pulse of waves through the soles of our feet Now you understand what home feels like and wonder where you've been all this time. Tanah Haney www.springpeeperpoetry.ca ROOTED TO THE SKY Rooted to the Sky I’m happiest among trees near water or woods by a meadow or a thicket by a bog or a bush of maple trees tapped for spring sap I belong in the wild woods I’d gladly become a paper birch with a nest of baby robins in my leafy hair my unfurling buds stretching sunward for sweet kisses my roots exploring rich depths of loamy soil filaments and tendrils communing with poplars and sumac I’d swing and sway through the seasons my heartwood rooted to the sky Chris Cavan, We’Moon 2025 Gaia Rhythms for Womyn: Growing Edge THE WILD WAITS
The Wild Waits The wild is not just out there, waiting. It is here, under skin, in bone, in the pulse that refuses to be tamed. No matter how much concrete we pour, no matter how many times we silence ourselves, the wild waits. Patient. Fierce. Loving. And when we let it rise, we remember who we were before the world told us otherwise. Brigit Anna McNeill, social media August 2025 WE ARE GATHERERS "The Hag” Meraylah Allwood We Are Gatherers We are gatherers, the ones who pick up sticks and stones the old wasp’s nests fallen by the door of the barn, walnuts with holes that look like eyes of owls, bits of shells not whole but lovely in their brokenness, we are the ones who bring home empty eggs of birds and place them on a small glass shelf to keep for what? How long? It matters not. What matters is the gathering, the pockets filled with remnants of a day evaporated, the traces of certain memory, a lingering smell, a smile that came with the shell. Nina Bagley Crow carries the memory Crow Carries the Memory I never go looking for crow feathers. They are given. Found along the path, caught in moss, resting on the dark soil as if the bird has just stepped out of its body and into air. Crow does not lose feathers carelessly. So when one lies before me, I take it as a small nod from the unseen world, a quiet acknowledgement. In the old way, feathers were not ornaments. They were messages. Breath made visible. Sky made touchable. Crow carries the memory of everything- death and birth, shadow and light, the places between worlds where our ancestors still walk. When I find these black feathers, I feel watched over… not by something above me, but beside me. As if the land itself has eyes. I bring them home like stones or bones, simple offerings from the wild, and place them with the things that matter. Not decoration. Connection. A reminder that I am never walking alone, that the old ones still speak, and that sometimes their language is only a single dark feather lying quietly on the earth. Wild Spirit Weaver EXPLANATION "At the Threshold of Wild Belonging" Doug Van Houten Explanation Finally I just gave up and became an animal. I slept when I was tired, sometimes dropping in mid-stride, curling into a knot on the sunny floor. I ate raw food at odd hours, wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, stopped brushing my hair. The phone rang, but I didn’t answer it. Mail lay unopened on the stairs. Flowers drooped in dry pots. Dust sifted down from the ceiling in hazy swirls. I left the windows open. After a few weeks I grew accustomed to it, sank deeper into my actual body, learned to love the hours as they passed. I let go of the spinning human world and walked in the hills at night under a changing moon. Deer swung their heads toward me. I sat beside them in their beds of creaking grass listening to crickets ticking in the heat. I cooled my skin in the ocean, licked the crusted salt from my arms. In time, my throat forgot to speak, it lost the bright angles of consonants, the dark sloping vowels. It joined the chorus of mute life with a kind of hum. Molly Fisk MY SOUL IS NOT LIGHT Art by Sarah Jarrett My Soul is Not Light I used to think my soul was light- ephemeral, untouchable, fragile. Something that floated above the ache of being human. But now I know my soul is soil. It holds hundreds and thousands of composted ancestors, stories, griefs, and tender survivals. It is dark and fertile, alive with what has been broken down and transformed holding seeds of truth and longing. My soul is not light- it is the ground that longs for it. Soil turning toward sun, tea-coloured, unfurling, becoming. Brigit Anna McNeill, social media October 2025 the wild taught me this Art by Lucy Campbell The Wild Taught Me This For a long time, my heart learned how to go quiet. Not because it was weak, but because it was paying attention. It tightened like soil in drought, pulling its tenderness inward, keeping the most vital waters underground until the world felt safer to drink from again. The wild taught me this. Damaged land does not rush its repair. It waits for cover, for rest, for the return of birds and fungi and rain, and then, without fanfare, it begins to green. So does the body. So does the heart. What withdrew to survive can return for living, slowly, when safety is something we begin to grow beneath us again. Brigit Anna McNeill, social media December 2025 we were of the earth We Were of the Earth Why’d they fence the commons? Why’d they burn the witches? And work so hard to end The Earth-based traditions? Why’d they kill the languages And subjugate the women? And claim it was in the name Of God and religion? It’s our birthright to remember ‘Cause the roots remain The roots remain We still are Nature, living herself as human We are Nature Living herself as human..... selections from a song written by Andy Fischer-Price, inspired by his participation in "Before We Were White" SHADOW STILLNESS HERON Shadow / Stillness / Heron In the quiet places, where light thins and the world listens, the heron waits. Not hidden — held. Shadow is not absence here, but depth. Stillness is not emptiness, but awareness gathering its breath. This stone carries the memory of standing between waters and air, between what moves and what knows when not to. shadow · stillness · heron A companion for those who walk softly, who trust the long pause, who listen for what rises when nothing is forced. Wild Spirit Weaver the intelligence of decay The Intelligence of Decay I lay my body on the forest floor to remember what the ground already knows. Beneath me, lives are loosening themselves back into soil, wood softening into humus, leaves surrendering their shapes, lichen stitching air to bark. The forest does not hurry this work. It trusts the long intelligence of decay. I am learning to trust it too. Brigit Anna McNeill
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 The Westray Goddess, the
oldest human form found in Scotland. (Orkney Archipelago)
(eik) eUROPEAN iNDIGENOUS kNOWLEDGE
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