Art & Poetry
Laudato Si
by: Audrey McHugh
The silent sanctuary of Nature’s bloom,
speak psalms and proverbs yet unknown.
If acid rain were healed by prayer
restored as pure, from whence it came
above the mountain’s terraced tops.
But now pollution’s earthly shroud
forming ‘round a mortal cloud,
obscures the birth of extinction.
Soon the sacred soil of Spring,
odorous, a putrid thing, seeing
amber waves of glory groan,
and plastic waste clog ocean foam.
The beloved beasts that won’t be born,
will mock mankind, and mourn.
The loss of Eden once again,
the genesis of mortal men.
Will Adam stake his reclaimed home?
For Nature cannot stand alone.
The Redwood Grove
by: Audrey McHugh
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Once a timeless redwood grove,
whose green leaves waved in the sunlight
red sturdy trunks that outlived
the birth and death of nations,
their gnarled feet wicks
that fire blackened but did not consume,
these survivors of glacial freeze and devastating drought,
have met a violent end.
Felled by wanton lumbering,
on a scale measured in human greed,
Earth’s tallest trees crashed on the ground
their dismembered branches left to rot,
abandoned by the hummingbird,
mourned by the goldfinch, warbler and the bees.
and by the mountains that know they’re gone.
Redwood dust clings to hikers
walking in the graveyard
amid the ruins of the trees cathedral,
and from the sky, where birds won’t fly,
the branches, stumps and stones,
a place they once called home
and where mankind came only to worship.
Heedless
by: Audrey McHugh
From the morning just born
out of the night’s light
awakening from our slumber,
warning in precious time,
our refrain a carrion call,
an angelus for mankind
Scarcely heard though scorned
the watchman sits, calling, calling,
by the wayside ,weak and lame,
until a future mourning
pays the price for our distain.
Deliver us from this day dawning,
of deadly seas, our whole life longing
for blue whales fins and woodpecker wings
the Sylvan rivers, the hope that springs
We can be stewards transforming life
If blessed and broken we became.