The purpose of Poetslife is to promote the art and discipline of American Tactical Civil Defense for families and small businesses and to contribute practical American civil defense preparedness guidance for all Americans through my articles in the The American Civil Defense Association (TACDA.ORG) Journal of Civil Defense and leadership as the volunteer Vice President of TACDA.

4/06/2007

Mom and Nature

Phyllis Mary Watson Curley, (May 16, 1926 - April 20, 2004), my mother, was a great lover of nature. As the months of April and May include her birth day, death day, Easter, and Mother's Day, her life and legacy always hit me hard this time of year.
One part of her legacy is that she loved nature, and especially birds, flowers and the ocean. Lillie's of the Field were one of her favorite flowers. Many times I heard her say, "Feed the birds and you'll never go hungry!" or "That little rose bush would produce one rose each day. I always thought God was telling me you can make it through one more day and here is my little miracle for you."
When time allowed, she would bundle and trundle all eight of us (Lynn, Bob, Hank, Bruce, Sue, Don, Steve and Jackie) off to Cape May, NJ in the summer to her mother-in-laws Victorian three blocks from the Atlantic, or to the parks in Germantown and West Oak Lane, or to Valley Green in the Wissahickon...or just to the nature to be found in our backyard.
She loved the ocean...everything about it...the smell, the way the waves cracking the beach were a meditation...swimming the waves...talking above them and catching up and being with her family on vacation. 
Now that so much propaganda and false science is daily being broadcast about nature and our impact on it, I thought I would honor my mother's memory here with photos of nature , photos she would have enjoyed...and maybe still can. 
The Safina Institute with its common sense approach to preserving marine life and their ocean home, would seem her kind of organized effort.









Blue Bird of Happiness


Journalists, media moguls
And Hollywood thespians
Appear daily to tell us
The world is ending,
The earth is warming.
And death, destruction,
Disease, starvation

And all form of pestilence
Are one more pollutant,
One more war,
One more way,
Other than their way,
Just about to strike.

And yet, the blue birds sing.
They arrive Christmas Day
Just when it seems
They would never appear
In the nest box some poet
Put in the middle of a garden.

They sing and sing
From God’s lips
To our hearts
To tell us the answers
Are with our Creator

If we are not so busy
Worrying and pontificating
To hear the bluebirds sing
From their holy nest box
Around the crypt, city and country
About The Gift in the manger.