It’s Not As If Destruction Can Simply Be Undone by Judith Feenstra

“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality,” the novelist Ayn Rand wrote. But was she correct? It seems people are entirely capable of ignoring nature’s messages, of missing the evidence that shows us the costly consequences of human destruction of natural habitats and species. In March this year, as the Coronavirus caused lockdowns world wide, UN environment chief Inger Andersen said, “Nature is sending us a message.” That the failure to heed a warning is costly, is something most of us learn only through experience–if we ever learn at all. Minnesota poet Judith Feenstra was educated in Social Gerontology, and maintains an interest in the field of aging by paying special attention to works of poetry that reflect the aging perspective. One of those perspectives, which she brings to this poem, is the wisdom of experience, formed by a life attuned to the messages of nature.

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My Breast by Hedy Tripp

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a breast cancer story-poem by Minnesota writer, Hedy Tripp. “In the spring of 1996, I was diagnosed with stage one intraductal

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Letter by Letter by Bill Meissner

September returns. Students return to school and their letters, while the Jewish High Holidays (or literally translated, the “Days of Awe”) approach. In Bill Meissner’s poem, “Letter by Letter,” the themes of learning, forsaken ambitions, disappointment and regret, the passing of time, and the sorrow of contrition, converge with a sprinkle of hope that things are, nevertheless, somehow all right. This is a poem that for me perfectly captures the paradoxical joy-grief of September, a season that poignantly reminds me that things pass away, thereby heightening my awareness that life is beautiful.

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