Birth of Soul

             by L.S. Heatherly

Soul -- in singing, talking, playing music;
In living, loving, and being human:

Something unbought by diploma's hubris;
Ungained by travel, arts, and science in hand;

Something growing outward, upward and true:
Where yearning stops; Heart throbs; and Earth-love springs;

Enfolding the child, relating love's rule,
Over all Human and Earth brought things.

Soul is mother of family, village, and fairness;
Of bondings, givings, receivings: all this

Old treasure defies the greedy and selfish!
Soul is wonders, splendors, all lovings' sweet bliss!

Soul's a sweet cup, sipped here, in fleeting time;
So unworthy, we, of soul's long presence.

Human heart's vision is Culture's essence.
Soul's decision is pure, ancient, and sublime.

With each arising from our depths,
We are, briefly, born again-blessed.

With each pollution of child's purity;
We pollute, strike short, our futurity.



Copyright 2013 L.S. Heatherly

Nature of Life

Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry,
she carries them.
                                                   -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men argue, nature acts.              
                                                      -- Voltaire

The known universe beyond Earth is not hostile, nor is it friendly.
It simply has no feelings, no struggling selections of life, no joys.
                                                                   -- L.S. Heatherly

Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all hers sons at play,
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.
                                                               -- Matthew Arnold

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in Nature-- daily to be shown
matter, to come in contact with it-- rocks, trees, wind on our
cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! Common Sense!
Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
                                                         -- Henry David Thoreau

Deep in their roots,
All flowers keep the light.
                                                             -- Theodore Roethke

Give me a spark o' nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire
                                                                    -- Robert Burns

Man [has become] a complex being: he makes deserts bloom
plastics, steel, artificial intelligence, many anti-Earth-lifes. He
makes lakes, streams and children die.

Mankind can never hope to see
A living thing more lovely and still free
Than the infant child upon our knee.

Conscious life: the only nature breathing, caring, loving.



2013 All rights reserved

Pretty Lie

They say a picture's worth a thousand words.
If so, then why do poets write?

Do techno shots on paper and on screen
Lack wht science and art imply they mean?

Is this magic show a seduction without end
To hide some lies on which we now depend?

Does the poet's eye of spirit mind
Refute the eye of science-gadget mind?

Does this condensation of our speech
Reveal some truth that science cannot reach?

Will the poet rise up to defy
The rampage-mind's illusion, that Pictures don't lie.?

Does the spirit-eye go blind
From techno-eye, so prettily unkind?


(from Ch XI of The Last Human Spring)

Trayvon Martin Trial: 2 minutes = Scalpeled Justice

Scalpeled Justice, Truth, Reality, Court Trial, and Socioculture

The jury and lawyers were given FALSE and UNREAL instructions,
evidence, arguments, and concept of event.  Everyone, in fact, was told
that the 2 minutes of struggle between two men was the the event causing
the death of Trayvon Martin. Jury and all were told:  that  2 minutes was
the ONLY moments to reach a verdict about: a 2 minute incident.

But, in realty, those 2 minutes CANNOT be divorced away from
the preceding 3.5 minutes that created those last 2 minutes. The
physical life-or-death struggle was CAUSED, was created, by:

1. The defendant's decision to violate instructions given him:
"We do not need you to do that." (about 5.5 minutes before the fatal shot)
2. The defendant's 3.5 minutes -- of following, approaching-- and; thereby
triggering(creating) the 2 minutes of fatal struggle.

To scalpel away most of the fatal event-- the causation 3.5 minutes that
created-- caused and made inevitable-- the climax of the full event: this is a
misrepresentaion of the full event as being reducible down to 2 minutes.

The defendant's actions during the opening 3.5 minutes CAUSED
the closing 2 minutes of deathly struggle. As his group told him: "We
don't need you to do that." Nor did Martin and our country need that.

This scalpeling down to 2 minutes makes the full event equivalent to two
men walking toward each other on a sidewalk, locking eyes and, fearing each
other, engaging in a life-or-death struggle: this is NOT what happened. It makes
this event generally equivalent to a drunk driver being found guilty of another
driver's death; when, in reality, his friends (or social norms) assured him,
"you can do it; you can drive; you can make it home."

The life-or-death struggle was created by the behavior of the defendant--
following and confronting Martin!

The defendant created the life-or-death last 2 minutes. And thereby,
created the death of the loser of that struggle.

He created Martin's death in the starting 3.5 minutes that, innevitably,
in time, created the closing 2 minute deathly struggle. There would be
no death-struggle WITHOUT the opening 3.5 minutes!

The closing of an event cannot be divorced away from the event's beginning.

And this event cannot, in reality, be separated from wider events
creating this one! What really, more widely, happened? The defendant
( and those that think, hold the same feelings, hold the same values, and
behave like the defendant) created the death of Trayvon Martin. The
defendant was an agent, one person, acting on behalf of (at least two) particular,
sociocultural pathogeneses, racism and classism(Zimmerman was
employed).

The larger, bad news is that we, apparently, won't make it home either!
Because we have forgotten that, humanity, innately, had a home; and have
forgotten where it was, and what it consisted of: community, brotherhood,
the golden rule, et.al.



Coptright 2013 L.S. Heatherly

Come In, Earth! Come Out of Life!

..........................................................................................................................................
One Giant Step Toward Colonizing Space?
No, Just Looking for Feats Outside of Earth-life (outside of Biosphere):

Our Brother's Keeper? Or Physics and Technology's Sweep
Away from Earth-Life's evolved, conscious love!
..........................................................................................................................
"Contact, contact, contact!" [with Earth-life] -- Henry David Thoreau

Embrace Earth's life! This includes Us! -- L. S Heatherly

Technology -- the knack of so arranging the [artificial] world
that we don't have to experience it [the natural world].
                                                                          -- Max Frisch
Technology -- the accelerating creation of an artificial world that
crowds out Earth-life's natural world and our engagement in Her lifeworld!

Earth created Life herself! She experienced the miracle of Life's conception herself! Life did not have to be transplanted from anywhere--
especially not from the unreachable, known universe!

Impregnated by sunlight reaching her carbon and water at the right time and spot!
A spark of life! Transforming just another life-less planet into the unfolding miracles of consciousness and love!
                                                                                               -- L.S. Heatherly

"Life is all there is, let it flower!"                -- John Ruskin and Lewis Mumford
                                                                  (quoted in The Last Human Spring)

"One just might laugh oneself to death
At the space station's implied boast, to Mother Earth:
"Look, Mom, what we did!
True; their delight is sci-technic power, not
Mother Earth's life and evolved love!"
                                                                                        --  L.S. Heatherly

"Some scientists (one on PBS) boast that we don't have to worry about Humans 
becoming extinct: We will have self-replicating machines to carry on for us!"
We create abuses of human life; as science claims it can make better use of us than Earth's evolved, natural selections have made. We waste our humanity: creating cyberneticized machines, toys and robots. Delusional that they will out-live mortal humans.

We are "cool"; and indifferently watch as their employments artfully destroy pieces of Earth-life and Her humanity, in the name of the supremacy of the individual(ism) and branches of egoism-empire-sci-technic-commercial-materialistic delusions of grandeur --treasons  to Earth's Life, Spirit and Soul.

We worship at the entertaining alters of sci-technic, arrogant usurpations of power-- deserting Earth-life's ecosystems and her masses of humanity.
                                                                                               -- L.S. Heatherly

"Life is an offensive [on Earth], directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe."
                                                                                 -- Alfred North Whitehead

"The best defense is an offense; and Earth-life started her's fully with two main forms:
(a) individual and species reproduction and (b) natural selection of physical, mental,
social, spiritual and cultural attributes interacting with mutation, and (c) with
 physical climate, ecological and sociocultural climatic attributes."
                                                                                               -- L.S. Heatherly
                                                                                                                                                   
"From its first spark, Life went on to conquer one planet, removing it from,
setting it apart from, the life-less known universe, from the unreachable universe.
Earth, through its evolved miracles, especially its self-conscious loving species, is
is a trillion times more phenomenal, meaningful and precious than the known,
unreachable, lifeless universe as we can experience it. More astounding still, educated,
city-fied humankind can no longer, really, reach this wondrous, planet, jeweled with
life and love! They are, now, stranded in civilization as castaways from their
home of yester-time(s) and yester-being(s).
                                                                                           -- L.S. Heatherly

"When Earth-life evolved to social mammalian life, to conscious and self-conscious
primates( human and nonhuman); Earth attained to a sharp, brilliant, wonderful
quantitative difference, as well as a definitional difference, from all known planets.
A trillion times more precious, it should no longer be called a planet primarily. That is
derogatory, disrespectful and insulting to her as home and creater of her many infinitely
most prescious,species of life. She should not be called, merely, or firstly planet Earth.
A planet first in time only; because millions of years ago, she slowly tranformed into
a precious ecophere, biophere, Lifesphere.

We need a debate or stuggle of terms to arrive at a name for our Earth other than a term
denoting her secondary lifeless areas and elements. Yours truly used the term, Earthlifeworld,
some dozens of times in the major work, The Last Human Spring.

Planet, Earth-life, would also be more worthy a name for such preciousness. Surely,
human scientists, social scientists and life scientists that hold the Earth  precious enough,
along with lay people, could bring about this failure of science to make a precious distinction
between Earth and many 1000s of known planets. This misnomer is a major factor in our
long abuse and toxicification of Earth's life and of Her humanity.

We can only do big challenging things if we have the heart to feel they must be done.



---------------------------------------------------------------------
We are loosing contact with the Living Earth.
Will our last call be:
Come in, Earth! Come in! 


All human species live through the inspiriations and relationships of the Living
Earth encradling us. Mother Earth has produced-- has created through Earth-life's
evolution-- millions of species of life, many thousands of sentient and conscious
species, and a fair number of self-conscious, social and loving species.

Post Modern, high-tech civilization has not and cannot create any conscious species
capable of ecological interaction and balance. Especially out of science's arrogant,
creative abilities are the sentient, conscious and self-conscious, social, loving species
seen in the gorilla, orangatan, chimp, bonobo and several human species of the past
and our own Homo sapiens.

The last is the species we innately, ecologically, sustainably belong to; but, from which 
we are making our exit -- into an artificial, electronic, cybernetic, digital, robotic, virtual
creature. One marked by decline in naturally, ecologic, evolved senses, as well
as, by arrogance, delusions of granduer and ingratitude to Mother Earth (Gaia),
the only eco-sustainable life-creative system on Earth, or anywhere in the reachable
universe.

Unknowingly blind, we are, with escapist excitement, bidding Mother Earth, her human
nature, spirit, being, self-consciousness and natural, human love, farewell. We are
opening our minds and hearts, terminally to artificial, alien, anti-Earth(ecosphere),
and anti-human addictions. Therein, we entice our species along an artificial
pathway, leading toward human decimation/extinction.




Copyright 2013 L.S. Heatherly

Eyes of Child Quest Into Thee

(Amazon Child-Eyes)

I
Should we, now, think we'll ever see
A poem more lovely and more free

Than pristine child with seaching eyes
Perched on our urban, hassled knee!

A gift from Earth-life's, human wild,
Born with eyes questing into thee!

A child whose eyes, in vain, still quest
For Earth's pure eco-viillage, nest.

II
Such lifeway eyes, pure once, did find
Earth's free unfolding life did shine.

Our greed, thru might, did conquest,
And laid pure eyes of child to death.

Pure child-eyes now quest in screens,
Bind life and eye to machines.

We cannot wish, again, to see
The pure child-eyes in village free.

III
Child-eyes ask, Always bound? Or was I free?
And what, through art's machines, are thee?

For image and scene, you shoot me;
Never banned, I am the human game, that's free.



All Rights Reserved

Save the Wild? Save the Natural, Human Child!

.........................................................................................................................................
I.
To save the stream, the sky, the forest tree:
Save the infant child going lost, but once home free.

If children cannot eat? Love ain't served on Culture's table!
If children must now die? We've hit the tab of love: to disable!
Why must we and Earth-life die? We study all; but cease to encradle!

Babe crawls, talks, walks, all in tandem, grow
along the paths that genes turning-ons do show;
and the paths of Mother Nature's nurture-culture means of love.
Dance for rain, Sun, crops, for all outside and sky above;
But first, dance for shoots of primal, spirit-innards-- dance for love!

II.
Stewardship is the scientific substitute for what we've lost,
Natural love of Earth-life, and Her original, true humanity.

In civilization, we learn through mainstream environmentalism, to think
that we are the stewards of the land, of living Earth, even of humanity.
In reality, the opposite is the case, and more.

The Living Earth is far beyond any stewardship of humankind-- She has
created us through the evolution of Life! And She will continue to sustain
us; if we merely renounce and cease our violations of her ecospere's
nurturings, as well as, our violations of our natural, human culture: our
human nurturome, originally, very slowly, selected for us through ions of
humanity's blueprinted map of cultural pathways into
more and more deep-becomings into human beings.

Love is thicker than blood. Blood carries the family through bio-rebirth.
But, there is no anemia of blood so fatal, as loss of love in family-community.
Love deficiency anemia is passed not by genes, but by cycle
of love-deficient culture, the citified, increasing generation to generation.
Our humanity is natural, Earthly-wide-- has no nature to be artificial, citified.

Human beings don't merely grow biologically, into organism-human beings.
They, equally, grow socioculturally into human beings. The new-
born baby is helpless without its sociocultural blueprint for
relationship-born growth. Genome bears forth the brain-body growth;
nurturome(culturome) bears forth the culture-spirit-social-being growth.

Science holds that food+shelter+sexual reproduction+ learning
= human evolution and development. No baby will eat without love!
The proof that love is nurturome-evolution: this is in the pudding not eaten.

II.
Earth-life has created us -- evolved us-- through becomingism.
We can see this, in microcosm, in the fertilized egg's process
of becomings, from zygote into fetus, into embyro, into birth of
a human organism-- baby's crying and reaching out for the baby's
takings in of human being's developmental, relational phenomena.

If some of the new-born baby's developmental nurturome(culturome) is
missing through toxic, pathogenic decay; then, some of human being, in life's
due course, will be missing.

Some four billion years of the evolution of Earth's life is summarized,
and witnessed-- particularly the last 600 million years, the Cambrian
explosion-- in the embryo's process of becoming, thru fish, amphibian,
reptile, and mammal, into becoming a human organism-- becoming
a baby born waiting-- to travel its rightful human pathways, its birthrights,
from human organism into human being, spirit, nature, identity, eco-culture,
reality and humanity's role in Play of Earth-life.



2013  L.S. Heatherly

O Music, Fail Not Sweet Life on Earth!

I.
Ask not for whom the drum beats,
Guitar strums, fiddle bow rings,
horn blows, and piano man sings.
These should rightly sound for thee--
For Earth's life; for all Humanity.


II.
The Music, then, enters our life's relationships.
From memory's and longing's chord, melody slips

Into balance with life on Earth;
Renditions eco-spirit's rebirth,
Arrangements seek what life unfolds,
Taking stand as band for souls.

Enters natural village-protections,
Enters natural village-selections,
This orchestration, of humanity with Earth?
Music reaches for our natural rebirth!

III.
Take care, new music on artificial wing;
Fail not what soul would sing;
Be not false, elite artifact.
Honor ancient mission, meaning and tact.

Fail not spirit's human sociality, 
Ritual, lore, love and culturality.
Fail not our organismicity's worth;
Fail not life-and-love-jeweled planet, Earth.



2013 L.S. Heatherly