Happy Earth Day 2026!

The Gulf of California

By Anita Endrezze

There are two memories of tides:

one for the deep blackness that split

away from the mother sea

and one for sea that found itself

in the daybreaks of rivers.

Yet it was all one sea

tracked by comets and the Elegant Tern,

seals in speckled pod-shaped skins,

and whales, opening their small eyes

when the hands of people drew fish

out of the salt.

Geologists tell us that the sea split

millions of years ago

before the Yoemem, Yoremem,

Kunkaak, O-Otam

curled their tongues around the names

of themselves and raised the conch shell

to their lips, so that the sound of nature

became human, too:

kalifornia vaawe

Then the sea was measured

and divided into leagues.

The Spanish ships called it dangerous

because the sea tore in two ways,

tide and rivers,

so they contained it in maps

written on dead animal skins

with ink made from dried octopus blood

Mar de la Kalifornia

Golfo de California

Then it was named the Vermilion Sea

when the red-shelled crabs clicked in the waters.

It was the Sea of Cortés

because it’s the right of the Conqueror

to claim the world in his name.

It’s his right to name hunger after himself

and to take away rivers

and children

and to give back the bare bones

of life

in the Queen’s name.

What can you say about men

who name the mountains “mother”

madre

when the worst curse they can shout

defiles their mother

in the act of creation?

Now we call the Gulf of California

polluted

with the pesticides of fields

and the wastes of factories.

And the voices of the fin-backed whale,

sardines, sea-kelp, anemone,

and turtle are quieter,

so that we have less memory

of the way it was

and less hope

for the way it will be.

In the winter I eat strawberries

from Mexico

and oranges, sectioned and split

apart

on my north continental plate.

I don’t know much about my relatives

picking the fields near Bacum, Torim.

I don’t know much about the spiny sea urchin,

except that it knows more than I

about the sea, the sea that names itself

unnameable

movable horizon.

Sitting Alone on Jingting Shan Hill

By Li Bai/Li Po, translation on chinese-poems.com

A flock of birds is flying high in the distance,

A lonely cloud drifts idly on its own.

We gaze at each other, neither growing tired,

There is only Jingting Shan.

Squirrel Forgets

By Lilian Moore

Where

where

where

did I bury

that nut,

that sweet plump

nut that I carried

away?

Where

did I stop?

Where did I drop

That fat ripe nut

that I saved for

today?

Did I hide it

deep and far, or

near?

And why's a new green

nut tree growing

here?