Seeds
What dark fruit will grow
from mountains stripped bare of green
chasing the black fire?
sgreerpitt
12 September 2008
Photo is of mountain top removal strip mine less than half mile from my home in Letcher County Kentucky.
View other poems on the "Seed" prompt beginning Sunday September 14, at One Single Impression
15 comments:
Sue, your words and photo bring to mind an old favorite Chinese proverb with the suggestions of renewal and optimism. "If you keep a green bough in your heart, the singing bird will come." Maybe someday a seed will fall upon its barrenness. Yours are thought provoking lines which lend themselves readily to environmental concerns which we all have.
ann at Gaullimaufry Gleanings
I enjoyed the "dark fruit" implications. Finely nuanced meanings here.
Very thought-provoking words.
At first I thought of a forest fire, which is beneficial to new growth, but strip mining is something different. Although life will usually find a way.
..many thanks for this beautiful and "Passionately Opinionated" poem..
Wow! "chasing the black fire..." Wonderful phrase. Powerful poem. I'm guessing from this poem that you are probably familiar with I Love Mountains.org, but here's the link just in case you are not.
Some great phrases in this - so full of meanings, many ways to take it.
Oh, it's an awful thing, mountain top removal... what are we thinking?
An excellent haiku...
So stark and raw, yet you can be sure that Nature will find a way to reclaim its mountain.
What an amazingly dark haiku-- you spoke so well of our environmental dilemma.
barbs.haiku -- one would like to think that would be true, but its not. To see the proof, go to the weather channel page for Hemphill, Kentucky 41825 and click on the interactive weather map, select "satellite" view, and magnify five or six times -- you'll see the 5, 10 and even 20 year old scars on the earth left by strip-mining. The "reclaimation" of stripmines involves compacting the earth in such a way that it is nearly impossible for trees to grown on it, and only foreign grasses seeded by the companies take hold and choke out the native grasses and shrubs.
Very sad indeed. Human greed is so destructive.
I have lived around strip mining, it isn't pretty. And back then, there was no reclamation. Same goes with clear cutting forests. Thank God, people are getting smarter now that they have less to work with.
I do wonder. Gripping work!
Provocative piece. Humans are such slow learners...I live in an area surrounded by 'superfund sites' and even as the attempt to clean up is made, there are plans afoot to decimate other areas. Amazing. Your work is impressive!
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