In the 14 [fourteen!] years since CES set out to get more people thinking about how their lives and the groups and enterprises to which they belonged were affecting our planet, many organizations have sprung up with similar or at least related missions.  We think of this as a kind of success but hardly more than a battle won in a long war to stabilize climate and bring human occupations and preoccupations into harmony with the earth. 

Starting around Earth Day, the flurry of activities planned by those organizations presents the public with an ever larger list of options to make Earth Day meaningful. 

Noting that celebration of the earth need not entail a trade fair for vendors of "green" goods and services, CES is organizing a "Poems of the Earth" poetry reading, at Buffalo Street Books on Tuesday, April 17th from 6 to 8 PM.  Bring the poems that bring your heart back to a full sense of awe or gratitude for the gift of a nurturing planet.  

The sobering charts and numbers compiled by Bill McKibben or James Hansen stun and sadden some of us but are ignored or mean little to many.  Nothing less than poetry can really speak of the spiritual trip that is our life on earth.  Many writers use their poetic voices to express the feelings they have about our home planet and what we may be doing to it.  Here are a few favorites.