“The Ecology” – Theme for Week #3, April 15 thru April 21
DevotionReader Series: 30 Ways of Looking at Black Poetry
Earth Screaming – Esther Iverem
I. Omega
This still mountain night is not still. It rings loud and shaking like maracas. Night bugs—locusts, cicadas—are screaming.
There has been no water here. Falls trickle pitifully down rocks. Even at night, on this cool, Pennsylvania mountain, it is too hot. With the upper atmospheres disappearing, stars so close, the unknown so near, coming so direct, settling on my head to crush my body, my foolish species.
Night bugs sound electric clicking a morse code about omega. An ancient rain chant rises from the trees.
You must come here. Come out of the city’s human hum, to really hear the earth screaming.
from “Earth Screaming,” in The Garden Thrives, edited by Clarence Major.
Esther Iverem, “Earth Screaming,” The Time: Portrait of a Journey Home, Poems and Photographs, 1993.
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