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Sometimes I've asked Eco-Lit students, in the classroom, to write of their environment "on the spot." This is one result:
Eviropoem
I am in my
body wrapped in skin
skin clothed in cotton
in a room with fluorescent light
and slightly stuffy air
in a building with classrooms
offices and library books
on a patch of ground with other buildings
making a school
surrounded by streets
stoplights and cars
in the middle of Boulder
full of random or purposeful human activity
dependent on electricity and gas
connected by telephones and computers
under the mountains
where goldseekers from the east
thought it looked like a good place to winter
one hundred thirty-one years ago
and never left
end of plains beginning of mountains
end of Arapahoe when the Americans came
only the statue of Niwot Left
squatting by the creek west of 9th St.
staring at downtown Boulder
with its restaurants and banks
the creek by which he sits
comes down a canyon
drops 3000 feet in fifteen miles
is fed by other creeks
going back to lakes and glacier
if you keep walking up
you can see a good deal of it all at once
to the east, Boulder, Denver, brown cloud
pollution now makes its own horizon
a dingy line in the sky
and there are always airplanes
flying over all of it
and there are always satellites
orbiting above them
always a moon
always a sun
they always return
and the earth so far remains—Chuck Pirtle
The prime act that must precede any talk of nature is observation. But there's no way pure perception can remain unaltered by language and our human psychology, our authorship; the class discusses this phenomenology question and we write with it in mind. We sometimes strive to approach, with out very limited senses, a fairly accurate take on a "leaf of grass."
Direct Observation Poem
mind
between
me
and
mountain—Jeff Grimes
Rhubarb red like a starched erect sinew sticking out of
the dirt: the StemEnding in triangular formations sharp drooping like
floppy garrisons: the LeavesMargarine yellow starting to melt on a skillet pan
intricate like doily patterns: the HeadOne tarnished copper green leaf the tip of it starting to
change into rhubarb red like rusting plate mailThe most important part a wrinkled dried-out sun-scorched
leaf like a wet walnut brown sock left twisted upon
itself after being wrung outThis burnt potatochip leaf is barely connected to the
stem.—Aaron Hoge
