The Children's Peace Plan

I.

Ask the children for Peace Plans!

No God has ever come!

Food, clothing, shelter.   For these,Love stands! 

Not life forever in hereafter to come!

Silence guns! Testosterone's helter skelter!

Watch joyful child-eyes light up the land!

Set Free family love, 

Root of social-love to rise above!

Community embraces real nest, childhood joy!

Here, life and soul find their ploy!

II.

Ask not that empire rules 

Holding riches stolen! 

By hoax of false divine; 

Stop ceremony devised by fools.

Ask not generals and soldiers!

Here, death and ego run for fun!

Where have all the flowers gone!

To grave yards youth-full, every one!

Yea, children are the future

Of Love and community-nurture!

Chose no more life of greed and hate;

Chose Earth-child -- all, hence, elevates.

Bond human hearts: soul of matter!

Not a never seen hereafter!

Copyright 2016  L.S. Heatherly

Give Life as Soul; All One, Thus, Be

              By  L. S. Heatherly

I.

Cast to lands, though, far from thee!

Cast one breath; then all are free!

Into the heart evolved for thee! 

Common soul of humanity!

Into Earth-life emerged with thee! 

Cast soul into human cradle
Eight million strong-- Earth-life labeled!

Cast not into dead Lifelessness!

Be found! With soul, alive with bliss!

II.

Cast alms to poor? Feigned grace we see!

Cast soul to soul: soul-alms set free!

Give life and soul! All one, thus, be!

Sow soul as alms; reap humanity!

Wealth is power, and rules through this:

Parent and child shall have less bliss!

III.

What doth happen; it's plain to see

When, not oft', mind's and heart's refrain 

Meet-up, on Life's seldom used, sweet lane!

Oh, suddenly, our soul slips in!

Mind and heart's-- friend of old,

And bearer of Life's only gold!

Our world transforms, so pure and clean!

Our hearts hold seeds for Child's soul-light,

Wells-up and out-- our Human Spring!

Wakes, now, heart's lone, cold night!

When babe and mother-eyes meet free;

And child finds home on father's knee.

IV.

That parent and child shall have less bliss:

All wealthy men take vows to this!

Cast soul as alms; and free thus be!
Give life as soul; all one, thus, be!

Copyright 2016  L.S. Heatherly

Self, World, Life, and Soul

When Life evolves to that place
Where Self and Life interface,
With Soul and World perceived as one,
Time and Being become as one.

This sacred matrimony, once in place,
Bequeathed, holds to its patterns and its pace.
Novel things break in to have their way,
Forsake such bliss for fancies of the day;

Wild oats of Ego fly at the face
Of downtrodden youth, still yearning for its grace.
Greed and lust run naked in the street,
Till Life confronts the Soul it has to meet.

Nature waits out these wars against her will;
The springs of Life, from tears, again refill.



Copyright 2001-2015  L. S. Heatherly

New Years: Youth, Age, Life and Freedom

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.
                                                                   --  Jean Jacques Rousseau
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest
love not freedom, but licence.
                                                                     -- John Milton
What is the nature of natural, innate, human freedom-- authentic
to our natural, human species? This is almost never asked nor answered.
To know, to have consciousness of, free human life and world; go to places
where there is abundant free forms of other social mammals, preceeding us.
For, we emerged from these freedoms, with these, are a part of these;
or we are diminished and perish.

You can identify human freedom by the company it keeps-- by abundant
free plants and the animals that preceeded our emergence from free
plants and animals. We come from the slow natural selection of freedoms,
interactive with, and dependent upon, many other species. Their
life and freedoms are a part of our life and freedoms.
                                                                           
What is the nature of natural, innate free plants and animals?
These can be identified by the free, unadulterated lands and
waters they keep to. You will not find them and their communities
in the city's land and water-scapes! City-life is conquered and ruled
by a quasi, human organism, engaged in the pursuit of elitist power;
rather than Earth's ecological growth in interactive, freedoms of many
ecological species of life, of which, our human being, lives
and freedoms are part.
                                                                          --  L.S. Heatherly

To be truly free, it takes more determination, courage, introspection,
and restrant than to be in shackles.
                                                                        --   Pietro Belluscb

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men [often unknowingly]
dread it [the real thing].
                                                                --   George Bernard Shaw

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.
                                                                       --  Victor Hugo

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one
of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
                                                                  --   Henry Frederic Amiell
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit.
                                                                    --   George Santayana
Behold! I do not give lectures on a little charity.
When I give, I give myself.
                                                                      --   Walt Whitman

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
                                                                  --  William Wordsworth



Copyright 2015  L.S. Heatherly

The Road Retaken

                    By L.S. Heatherly


How long this trace of road has wandered,
Dying, now, from lack of human reasons,
From sieges of growth, burrowings and seasons,
Is what the human mind first ponders.

And what became of the dream abandoned,
That rebelled, and took this path to somewhere,
Hoping for no trace of someone else having been,
For chance at grasping deeper self now here remanded?

And how long this dreamer's dream:
The resprouting of a life and soul?
How much of one being's lost ground retaken?
Is what the heart would have the mind could know.



from CH XI, Think Verse, Soul Lines, Ecopoetry
in THE LAST HUMAN SPRING
Copyright 2002 and 2009 L.S. Heatherly

Free Play of Life

Listen, closely, to chirps and songs of birds;
To howls and moans of gathered worlves;
To suckling babes, and romping toddler kids.

Watch, closely; all freedom unfolds in spontaneity.
Growing Love is the one, and only, deity!

Here, on Life's love-play grounds;
Love flashes within Living Nature's bounds!

Feel, Earth-Human-Life-Love grow connected!
Artificial law, through this, will be rejected!

Spontaneity! Life and Love spring!
Here, inter-springing, are Spirits inter-singing!

Mourn this bliss, now, mis-decaying away.
Study, the hitch and glitch of high-tech play.

Study, our Life and Heart away!
Love's blueprints; are being s-mattered away!




Copyright L.S. Heatherly 2014

We Shall Stumble Home

for Gary S. Snyder (and his knowing how to be)

I
You know, friends of Earth-Humanity,
Ever longing to be free,

From art's paradise lost;
We may, again, come to be:

From restoring at all cost
Old humanity, now lost,

We'll  find and re-become as one
Streambeds of human nature's run.

II
And whole, again, midst Mother Earth,
We shall discover our rebirth;

Find our Home, in Earth again,
Calling back Her child within;

Yes, reinstill our Life with Soul,
Some natural way.

Yes, we shall stumble Home again,
Some natural day.



Copyright L.S. Heatherly 2012

Human Innocence in Storms of Culture

(an autobiographical tale)
    
Quenching wanderlust, ousting fear;
Where end of human road
Meets trail of rabbit and deer;
.

Re-bonded with what is real --
Human and Earth-life held dear;
.

Wilderness-cleansed, one maverick,
Receding to the City-herd's Lifeway--
Conflict, desecrate and disjoint--
Pulled off Black Canyon Highway
For twilight time at Sunset Point.
.

The local place of roadway lore
Held one young couple resting there;
As night was falling and foreboding in '64.
.

Strings of verbal beads, an exchanging,
And through conversation, a rearranging
Of what is, in the "what's happening?" of yore.
.

Hallowed babe asleep, safe and sound,
Back in the homemade wooden shell,
On old pickup bed: images on the edge of Modern hell.
Parents, out of luck, Phoenix bound.
.

Beads and shells, ways of Lifeway happenings
In one Time and Being , of debated yore.
Voiced softly, yet deeply pondered, aimed at ripenings.
And sent into a gathering, cultural dusk, one night in '64.
.

Potato chips, a 29 cent bag,
Freely shared with one maverick;
Mostly just air, reflecting a family's plight.
Yet, tomorrows breakfast shared, defies any night.
.

One old truck, one old car, three youths,
A white-man powwow, a ceremony of cloudy sensing,
In three (and all subconscious Youth), in the year of '64:
Sensing personal and cultural storms commencing.
.

Nothing else expected, a mark of human sanity:
Requesting nothing but the sharing of humanity.
.

The maverick makes a silent move; as the flow of words
Attains to soul-embraces, dying human light, itself, slips--
Below both Bradshaw Mountains and all human herds;
By slight of hand, a ten spot meets the last few chips.
.

Rolling up chips and air, with "goodbye and good luck!",
Back into a '53 Pontiac; but, Youth itself had struck
A Detoured Road from Life; yet, cleansed, might restore.
All steered a driven self, into the gathering storms of "64.
.

Aye, such gathering storms destroy and estrange.
Storms striking human norms, Youth, mavericks--
High pressure cold fronts of cultural 'climate change'.
All now, begging one question: a human storm forevermore.
.
.

Copyright 2010  L. S. Heatherly

Ecocrisis: Earth, Humanity and Childhood Dreams,

...........................................................Dave Martin/Guardian

Prologue:

Beyond Despair

Whence the child that Comes to Be?
Born to live in Land once Free!

There's more in our oceans than oily fish and birds: we float there.
Beyond despair over lost wildlife, occupations and tourism;
Look deep: our violated waters bemoan the Human Condition:

I.

All our pollutions of Earth 

Enter our Human being's,

Gestational, amniotic fluid

Before they enter

The salty, amniotic fluid of Earth,

The origin of all Life.

.

II.
More debilitating than blindness of the eyes
Is blindness of the soul.

III.
More endangering than mind become blind
Is human culture, blind to sacred water, sky and land;
Blind to birthrights and dreams the human child.

IV.
If we cannot see Humanity, cannot see ourselves
As a threatened species, in oil-spill scenes;
We, first and foremost, are blinded by the oil in the water:

Blind to our Earth-place, our Humanity,
To child's becoming Earthly human being. 
To child's bonding to source of Earthly Human Life

V.

Beyond the decimation of Coast and Marine species;
Our humanity within us is becoming decimated.

Before the photos, before our Eco-disasters,
We have become the blind species upon the Earth.

Only Humanity is blinded, in heart and soul, by civilization.

VI.
Having created an anti-Nature culture, gradually for millennia;
We, then, disown its Sociocultural excretions, blaming entities,
supposedly "out there in industry and technology"-- outside
Human Will, Being and Soul.

Look within; only we, are the infidels of Earth-life, and, our Humanity.

Only we, are emergent aliens, invading Earth-Human natural treasures.


Epilogue:
Human Reality in Polluted Waters

Midst the oil and other debris in polluted waters,
If we cannot discern our grandchildren,
Even our very humanity, in that flotsam and jetsam;
We do not know what Humanity is, nor how and why it is.

L.S. Heatherly All Rights Reserved

Back to the Land, Children, Love, Freedom

                                                                                                    

 A Declaration of Childhood's Natural Rights

I.
Bring the Earth's bountiful, land and children together!
We shall re-seize nothing less than lush, green,
human redemption!

It is only by bonding our children during early
childhood to Earth's life, and her ecosystems;

Only by restoring the child's intimate
relationship with Mother Earth;

Only by restoring this childhood relationship that has
created, fulfilled and sustained us in Earth's play of life;

Only by restoring our natural, innate human nature
during our children's formative years;

It is only, therein, that humanity restores,
conserves and sustains its future on Earth,
the jeweled home and cradle of life.

It is only through childhood's re-nurturalization, and
re-naturalization of human nature, spirit, being, culture
and lifeway that civilization's fallen humanity finds redemption-- finds
restorations and conservations  of its natural soul and culture.


II.
May a vision be beholden upon us: the Back to the Land
Movement was, and remains amongst us today, the
legitimate and good heart of the Counterculture Movement
of the 1960's and 70's. The Land Movement is interactive and
bonded, through Nature herself and her human nature, with
the Environmental Movement.

Both Movements will continue to play foundational roles in
regenerating -- in re-naturalizing and re-nurturalizing -- the
human nature, being, spirit, family, community, culture, economy
and lifeway that Earth-life evolved for our two hundred thousand
 year-old human species.

Whatever rediscovery, restoration, and conservation
of these natural nurturings, 
Whatsoever these diminished and adulterated,
manifold forms of human love! 

These elements of our human
nurturome (sacrificed on the alters of civilizations'
power-wealth-domination ethos and empires): 
These recapturings will be the measure of our success at ameliorating the diverse
scourges, now coalescing as a looming, human decimation/extinction

Every civilization has, largely, fallen or been dispersed back into
village or nomatic lifeway, ultimately, not from insufficient
military, nor exhaustion of natural resources; but at the deepest
level -- the exhaustion of love-nurturings of natural childhood:
this nature-human, manifold love is the basis of natural, sustainable culture.

Behold children removed from Earth's natural land; and, therein,
behold battlegrounds of a human circus-zoo, its chains binding the
originally free, human heart!

Humanity declines from the cooling of the human heart,
from the diminishment of the very roots of the human
family, found in primordial depths of our heart and soul.

The infection and debilitation of natural, human love
by artificial, pollutant, behavioral-cultural toxins,
at the deepest, root level -- in our human infants and
children -- remains the true source of our fall from Life's
evolved, bequeathed, human grace.

Civilization, by its artificial nature, removes us from our natural
evolved, manifold forms of human love and relationships bonding
us into loving identities with each other, and other forms of
Earth-life.

Our natural ways of living and being, springing from the
heart, and engaged in union with the land and its abundant life
-- our humanity's heartland -- have created and carried us
through the eons.

As our DNA and human genome have carried our brain-body
organisms; so, too, these manifold forms of love, constituting
our human nurturome, have received, bonded, and inextricably
interacted, intergrown, interdeveloped, and intersustained our
human organisms as human beings! 

We are life beyond flesh and reptilian instinct-- onward into our loving, 
self-conscious humanness! Selections gathered for  human being, spirit and soul.

Love, in eco-families and eco-communities, is the soul of all our human matter.
Differences in ideas about civilization's society, life and world
are over-ridden by the heart and soul. 

This is a mark of humanity.
Natural, authentic, human love is revealed as the human spirit's
overriding victories over greed, artificial ideologies and enterprises.

Wheresoever, and whereupon, this true, human love successively falls
short of our humanity's minimum daily requirement; civilization's malnourished,
sociocultural mind-bodies are, thereupon, exposed, revealing its falterings at 
bearing and sustaining our evolved Earth-life's humanity and soul.

Bring forth children nurtured in nature-human awes and wonders,
in naturally beholden phenomena of joyful, loving relationships
within Earth's life and land, within her human heart and soul;

Bring  forth, herein, the only real Green Movement:
the greening of each generation of youth's human heart!


Copyright 2010  L.S. Heatherly