In 1969 this Cuyahoga River caught on fire,
lighting a spark under a new generation of Earth Healers.
Today the only fires here are red leaves
falling from the ash trees and the sycamores
spinning
into the autumn-shallowed waters
where children varied as river stones wade,
grasping at shiny fish,
and wondering at the beavers and the birds.
We heal the rivers and the lands in our good time,
repent our greedy sins
seared upon our Mother who is the Earth.
Although she has a climbing fever
we have hope
|for she is all we have
and we have everything.
—
Raymond E Smith grew up in a small town in Idaho. He spent half his life working in theatre and the other half in banking. He has a wife and six daughters, and is spending his retirement restoring 40 acres of played out Missouri farmland. He wrote poems while in the military during Vietnam, then began writing again shortly after retiring.
