Grace Cavalieri

To The Beauty of This Place (of the future)

The land is telling its truth again.
After Winter’s sharp sleep, it shows
what must be saved. Look at these

trees feathered with light,
the necklaces of foliage,
here from earth’s compassion.

Now a harmony of place where
presidents, poets, shepherds and kings
talk of peace as they walk these paths.

While it’s true there’s no scale to measure
treasures, this one is of new water, new green
kept safe from the aridity of stricken places

and destruction’s deadly face.
Instead, there’s serenity here to pray against such visions.
“Hope” is the map that extends

under our house of sun,
where natural worlds thrive.
Just look at the surface of this earth

where we’ve come together, in the radiance
of all this flowering.

Grace Cavalieri is founder and producer of “The Poet and the Poem” on public radio now celebrating 38 years on air, now from the Library of Congress, She has 18 books of poems and 26 plays produced on American stages. She won the AWP’s George Garrett Award and The Folger’s Columbia Award for serving other writers, plus the National Commission on Working Women; and, for poetry, two Allen Ginsberg Awards (1993 & 2003,) The Bordighera Award, The Paterson Award, D.C. Humanist Award, among others. She received the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington independent Review of books where she is the monthly poetry columnist.

www.gracecavalieri.com

www.loc.gov/poetry/media/poetpoem.html