THE MANICURED WILDERNESS (The Living City): The Adaptive Features Of Urban Ecology

The primary ecological event of 21st century Earth is global urbanization. Appearing to be at the vanguard of the decimation of the Earth, urbanization is perhaps at the vanguard of the recovery of the Earth ecosystem. Global urbanization offers significant adaptive features that have already begun to reduce the global population, increase efficiency, and shift from an industrial-based economy to an ecologically based economy.

THE POETRY THAT MAKES US

We live inside a poem.

It makes us like we make bread

And eats us like we eat bread.

We sleep inside this poem

And we walk about inside it.

We glean words from this poetry that makes us

From smooth stones and from heron’s lift above river

From the grace of wind in wild grass

From the wind-singers in high tree branches

From mountain summits’ flags of snow.

We are wild Earth singers and Earth tasters

And yet for all that we have become

We have still barely appeared in Earth.

We are still far too young to know who we are

Our beautiful songs still far too young

To sing this way that we are oceans and stars.