Terri McCord

The crispness of Delft blue
on bright pottery, tinge
of puddled gray-blue,
hint of turquoise in a
blood vein, the stark
blue of a winter lake,
salutatory blue
hue of a bird
 
perhaps all appear
as what we define as “green”
to the Himba tribe
of Namibia
as they do not
have a word for what
we call blue,
but name more
shades of green.
This is “buru,” greens
and blues and no distinction
between
sky that mirrors
in language the land.

“Like Jane Goodall says, it’s (spirituality) being amazed at things
outside yourself.” Nautilus, 2015

Some of us
choose to see
the hurling of rocks
by the chimpanzees
into waterfall,
the repetition of it,
the ritual

the dance,
then the calm
sitting and staring,
as spiritual

The questions of kindred
aside, the seeming meditation
and stone piling
at different sites
or into tree cavities
bears witness
to a possible shared sense
of sacredness,

to connect the unknowable,
a new urgency now.

Genesis and Collaboration with Poems – Honor Earth, Engage with Spirit

The relationship I have with my topics is one of wonder and engagement at how other living things move and react in the space or spaces they inhabit, and, most notably I suppose, is a wish for me to find commonality and love. Scientific research helps to ground my ideas, especially if I am not doing direct observation, and I am truly surprised by details I unearth. The scientific method and the opening to possibilities and patient watchfulness through the senses of another leads me to feel the interconnectedness, and encourages the desire to share and to protect or care at a level beyond myself, almost a forgetting of self. The emphasis on just “being” and experiencing that unfolding becomes everything, and a richness of poetic imagery reveals itself as well. It is a search for beauty. And how best to preserve and share that beauty on this earth.