When we talk about Environmental Justice, it is sometimes assumed that people will agree on what is ‘the right thing to do’. However, as with anything else, our decision-making about Justice is influenced by our values, by the things that we deem ‘special’, ‘important’, or ‘sacred’. We propose that there are (at least) three categories of valued environments, or ‘Holy Ground’: Nature, Place and Community. Think about these three different arenas and how you see Justice being applied to them.
For example, if Community is your value, you may feel that Environmental Justice has to do with how people are impacted and how human activity creates change. If Place is your value, then questions about Justice probably will involve a particular area with borders of a physical or conceptual nature. It may be that feelings of injustice are felt in terms of ‘This, not That’ or ‘Us, not Them’ or in a desire to see a Place resist change. If Nature is your value, then you may see Justice in more fluid terms as the balance of resources between producers/consumers and prey/predator is in a state of constant flux with perhaps no ultimate goal.
So, as you sit down to write about Environmental Justice in your unique voice, identify your values. Perhaps use the lenses of Nature, Place and Community to focus. What is important to you? Why? How does it affect your decision-making? What factors impact this ‘sacred’ ground? How do different cultural models or systems impact your cherished home? What feelings arise in you – what empathy for Living Things or Living Habitats? What fears?
Thank you for spending time with these concepts and these questions. Your presence, your life energy, and your embodiment of love is a gift that we are privileged and honored to receive. Please, share your poems with us!
All poems shared in response to the theme “Environmental Justice” suggested by Priscilla and Steve will be published here next Tuesday. You are welcome to come out to play no matter the status of your career: beginner, emerging or pro. Leave your poem or a link to it in the comments section below. You have until Monday at 8:30 pm PST to respond. If you are responding for the first time, please be sure to send a short bio and photo to thepoetbyday@gmail.com.Your bio and photo will be posted with your first poem by way of introduction.
PRISCILLA GALASSO (scillagrace, striving to live gracefully) is a member of The Bardo Group Beguines, the core team that publishes The BeZine. Her stellar essays and stunning photography are as outstanding as her commitment to environmental protection and the wilderness. She began blogging some time ago and this is what she has to say about that adventure: “Inspired by my sister’s Flickr 365 project on her 50th year, I began my own venture of self-discovery with my blog. My life had changed dramatically in the previous 5 years, and I had changed with it. My husband died, my kids moved out, I sold our home and moved in with a tall, dark Scorpio named Steve. I had a lot to process, a lot to learn about growing up and being responsible in this Universe. My eyes are open in a way they have never been before, and I want to share my vision and experiences.” Link HERE for an interview with Priscilla.
STEVE WIENCEK (Scholar and Poet Books, EBay and Scholar and Poet Books, Abe Books ) is the owner and founder of Scholar and Poet Books. He helped out with the September 2016 issue of The BeZine, which addressed environmental issues. You can read his feature article, Nature … Place … Community HERE. Steve says of his independent online store: “We are experienced book, music and video sellers. Our extensive and varied inventory includes a large collection of classical music CDs, LPs and sheet music; colorful and hard-to-find vintage GGA pulp fiction paperbacks; vintage children’s books and more! Find us and like us on Facebook, please!”
Abu Ward, ‘Father of the Flowers’, continued to maintain his carefully nurtured flower garden during the worst of Assad’s systematic bombing of Aleppo. He was killed by bomb dropped near this living oasis. His son, who, at 13 years old, left school to help his father attempted to maintain the garden after his father’s death, but it’s now closed. Sadly, in this instance, environmental justice has been, as so often, a victim of warfare.
Lovely! I’ve been working on a poem about Abu Ward myself. Pleased to see this, Dick. Don’t forget to email your bio and a photo, if you’re comfortable with that. Welcome to Wednesday Writing Prompt. thepoetbyday@gmail.com
bagged sugar cherry extract oil
of cloves buckminsterfullerene
essences pantheonized for delectation
bottled genies at our command
we so love purities
fleece white as snow
anthracite darkly dense
radial 24-caratotomy
kruggerrandom acts
and we feel godlike
magicmongering
we soupify the sky
we landfillet the lakes
sadsaturate soil
slagsilt the seven seas
it is a remorseless juggernaut
this megamodular magicker
and some of us are waking up
some of us want a different magic
the magic of the camper
who goes sees enjoys records
leaves the site none the worse
some of us want a reckoning
a calling to account
shame and punishment
some of us want to be sheriffs
but YOU STOP THAT NOW
is just like any other war
on any other badguy
and artificial value
has yielded unartificial power
and corruptive pushback
and corrosive continuance
deliverance must come
as with any other childbirth
spasmodically and with some blood
crowning and pushing through membrane
a slap and a gasp and a wail
our magical recording
and
transmitting devices will help
ill-gotten gains though they be
our one-person choices will help
at least
the enormity of the challenge
the size and perversity of the beast
will be revealed
as you yes you
give up your midas’s vehicles
stop eating the factory-farmed
children of hell’s misery
and reduce
the
“places you must see before you die”
to
zero
serve up justice to yourselves
and fire the single brick
of your life’s commitment
in the kiln
of paradise
by 
STEVE WIENCEK (Scholar and Poet Books, EBay and Scholar and Poet Books, Abe Books ) is the owner and founder of Scholar and Poet Books. He helped out with the September 2016 issue of The BeZine, which addressed environmental issues. You can read his feature article, Nature … Place … Community HERE. Steve says of his independent online store: “We are experienced book, music and video sellers. Our extensive and varied inventory includes a large collection of classical music CDs, LPs and sheet music; colorful and hard-to-find vintage GGA pulp fiction paperbacks; vintage children’s books and more! Find us and like us on Facebook, please!”
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 
My first response -dear Jamie :
#For Your Future’s Sustenance #
O my son !
Raise your head
I’m your benevolent mother
My eyes -your azure sky
When you are blown by caustic fervor
My brimming watery eyes turn into serene raindrops to alleviate you
My hands -your verdurous trees
When you lie wearily on my verdant lap
My hands spread florid twigs to shade you
My moist lips -your rivers
When your thirst touches me
Words of my lips turn into rivulets to kiss you to mitigate your thirst
Now -my son
Why are you burning my eyes with your voluminous black smoke
Why are you cutting my hands with your severe axe so grimly
Why are you tearing my lips throwing poisonous blues
I’m your mother earth
I’m your reason of survival -with snowy peaks
-golden flowers
-dancing rivers
Wouldn’t you be just to me
Wouldn’t you be fair to me
Not only for me but also
For your nourishment
For your children’s nutriment
For your future’s sustenance ages after ages …
©Kakali Das Ghosh
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Hi Jamie
My fourth response:
Purple Moors
were once forests
national parks heavy industrial
this oak headland a pitsite
lads snap off livelimbs
anarchic coppicing
black dogshitbags sway
on limbs left alone
don’t visit in a storm
oaks are lightningtrees
people can be oaks
oakgroves of druids
duir means a door
exit and entrance
raw open wounds of sacrifice
still bleed sap
this hand has molded
a garden out of wildlife
words out of nonsense
she used to say “when
one door closes
another opens”
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Hi Jamie,
My third response:
We Stop Decay
devote lives to prevent decay
of wood, breath, bone, brick,
gardens of our minds,
faculties of our hearts
Each day we weed, we resow,
rework, rebuild
the wood, breath, bone, brick,
gardens of our hearts,
faculties of our minds.
Laugh to heal the stench
of rot, worm eaten
brick, bone, breath, wood
landscape of flesh
fresh produce of light.
Born to decay in decay
heal the ever opening wound
brick, bone, breath, wood
flesh of landscape
light produce of flesh.
Laugh.
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🤣
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Hi Jamie,
My second response:
Land Is History
is a past pitman.
ancestor, a nailmaker
whose strong coffin nails
stout fasten the woods
grain swish as land without
skeleton to hold its’ skin.
Both open cast places.
where redundancy rips
old features from their faces,
old skulls from beneath their skins.
Redundancy within weeks drains the Dearne from their arteries, smooths disused canals from their cheeks, wetlands asset-stripped from their eyes.
And children sit on father’s knee as on a hill hear how men
made hills a sack of land
a weight of meaning
emptied.
Land no longer propped
by miners hands
subsides
into history.
(From my first pamphlet: “The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, 1993, revised 2017)
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as you take the road to Paradise
about half-way there
you come to an inn
which even as inns go is admirable
you go into the garden of it
and see the great trees and the wall
of Box Hill shrouding you all round
it is beautiful enough (in all conscience)
to arrest you without the need of history
or any admixture of pride of place
but as you sit in a seat in the garden
you are sitting where Nelson sat
when he said goodbye to Emma;
if you move a yard or two you will be
where Keats sat biting his pen
thinking out some new line of poem
*
From my ‘The Recovery of Wonder’ 2013
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Abu Ward, ‘Father of the Flowers’, continued to maintain his carefully nurtured flower garden during the worst of Assad’s systematic bombing of Aleppo. He was killed by bomb dropped near this living oasis. His son, who, at 13 years old, left school to help his father attempted to maintain the garden after his father’s death, but it’s now closed. Sadly, in this instance, environmental justice has been, as so often, a victim of warfare.
ABU WARD
‘The presence of the world is flowers’.
Abu Ward
This was the man
who planted flowers
where the bombs
were falling.
This is his son
who kneels alone
by the garden gate.
The dust he pushes
around their stems
with his thumb is where
his father lives now.
And each flower
will lift some dust
as it rises in spring.
DICK JONES – https://sisyphusascending.com
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Lovely! I’ve been working on a poem about Abu Ward myself. Pleased to see this, Dick. Don’t forget to email your bio and a photo, if you’re comfortable with that. Welcome to Wednesday Writing Prompt. thepoetbyday@gmail.com
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Thanks, Jamie. Biog + pic emailed.
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The intention of my poem is to show the interconnectedness of everything – nature, place, and community.
https://bilocalalia.wordpress.com/2018/02/07/village-circle/
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desecratory deliverance
we have grown to love distillates
bagged sugar cherry extract oil
of cloves buckminsterfullerene
essences pantheonized for delectation
bottled genies at our command
we so love purities
fleece white as snow
anthracite darkly dense
radial 24-caratotomy
kruggerrandom acts
and we feel godlike
magicmongering
we soupify the sky
we landfillet the lakes
sadsaturate soil
slagsilt the seven seas
it is a remorseless juggernaut
this megamodular magicker
and some of us are waking up
some of us want a different magic
the magic of the camper
who goes sees enjoys records
leaves the site none the worse
some of us want a reckoning
a calling to account
shame and punishment
some of us want to be sheriffs
but YOU STOP THAT NOW
is just like any other war
on any other badguy
and artificial value
has yielded unartificial power
and corruptive pushback
and corrosive continuance
deliverance must come
as with any other childbirth
spasmodically and with some blood
crowning and pushing through membrane
a slap and a gasp and a wail
our magical recording
and
transmitting devices will help
ill-gotten gains though they be
our one-person choices will help
at least
the enormity of the challenge
the size and perversity of the beast
will be revealed
as you yes you
give up your midas’s vehicles
stop eating the factory-farmed
children of hell’s misery
and reduce
the
“places you must see before you die”
to
zero
serve up justice to yourselves
and fire the single brick
of your life’s commitment
in the kiln
of paradise
LikeLiked by 1 person
Looking forward to seeing what this prompt precipitates! (I should really update that description — that 5 year mark has now become 10.)
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Oh, now that I re-read that sentence, the 5 years prior to my starting the blog…is still 5 years. OK.
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Time passes. 🙂 I’ve just approved the poems that have been submitted thus far if you want to check them out. Always fun. 🙂
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Hi Jamie,
Here’s my first response:
A Matter Of England
I stroll the matter of England
every workday. Recall rich
ancestral lords use miners sweat
lay clanking rails, raise putrid stench,
employ.
I walk the matter of England
see lives snatched by unmarked
uniforms, history laid waste
to make a point and remove sting
of sweated labour
I tread the matter of England everytime I chronicle the artificial lake, pit demolished, rails removed, soil has been moved on, seasonal.
Decipher its taste when we in/exhale its dust, decode invasions private/public, ingest new blood, remember old.
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..earth & #8211..
he asked me what i missed, i told him.
he suggests we look after the environment.
eat carefully, mind our ways.
i will.
these are the falling days.
sbm.
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thanks Jamie…..first response
.. spaces..
connect with spaces,
you may move differently.
sound different.
a specific style of dancing?
which reveals the environment as a character,
animation through animated intent
or something.
Johann Botha said this.
he is in Pretoria, he is
part of our audience
another sat quietly.
it can be dark.
the date is set.
24 this month
of winter
sbm.
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