HEIDI GRECO POEMS

Heidi Greco sent the blog the text of two poems that she read out at the Art in the Park event on October 28.Here they are. The first is untitled. The second is entitled "Beatitudes" You can read Heidi Greco's thoughts about the forest and the arts event here.
-Kirk Robertson


 Begin
with a single tree
alone in a grassy field.

Observe
the obstinate way its trunk
wrenches ever upward, sustained
by the very earth it pulls itself from.

Notice
the shape of its myriad branches
spreading out and open
like a waiting hand to cup the rain.

Consider
the line of its stance
how it reaches for the light
the ways it bends around itself, stretching into breeze.

Contemplate
the many years the tree has resided here
the many dried-up summers it has endured
the winter nights it’s stood its ground
against the cold, in solitude.

Listen
to its branches, their tips so fine in green,
those many sibilant fingers, rubbing amongst themselves
a mystery of whisperings to the sky.

As a single tree can be admired,
a forest is to respect. So much more
than the sum of its trees, it lives
and breathes, holds the soil in its grasp
enmeshed in a handshake of intertwined roots.

It is essential, the same way
we must hold one another,
lean toward the lee, away from the wind.
 -- excerpted from a longer work commissioned by the City of Surrey for National Poetry Month, 2012






Beatitudes for the 21st century
(based on the Gospel of Matthew, 5: 3-10)

Blessed are the downtrodden,
for they shall be looked up to.

Blessed are the atheists,
for they shall be proven correct.

Blessed are the recyclers,
for their spirits shall dwell in trees.

Blessed are those who challenge the courts and question the greedy,
for they shall be affirmed.

Blessed are the orangutans, whose intelligence shall be acknowledged;
the horses, who shall rise in the sky, flying as they were intended;
the tortoises, who will be assigned more spacious dwellings.

Blessed are the sweet-natured,
for they shall come back as bees.

Blessed are the homeless, the addicted, the unemployed,
for they shall be granted holiday pay and ensconced amongst stars.

Blessed are those worn down by the blights of daily life,
for they shall be released to ride galaxies of light.


-- first published in Igniting the Green Fuse: Four Canadian Women Poets, a chapbook published by Above & Beyond Productions, 2012