Giving Thanks in a Time of Catastrophe
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas,
and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.
—Commander Frank Borman, Apollo 8, Dec 24, 1968
I know, I know, I’m one of those
who habitually sees the glass as broken
nevermind half empty
so, too, the deck as stacked by the last
few generations of homo sapiens
(non-sapientes!)
who simply accepted a bad hand
as what they were dealt by the dealer
in a rigged game—but
I will show you now just how much
of a cockeyed optimist I really am:
I hold fast to Gaia!
Hesiod recorded her 7th Century BCE
Verily at the first Chaos came to be,
but next wide-bosomed Gaia
the ever-sure foundations of all
the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus
and Gaia brought forth of herself
Uranus, the Sky to cover her
on every side and Ourea (Mountains), and Pontus (Sea)
without sweet union of love
O generative omnipotence!
Then Gaia lay with her brother Uranus to beget
the Titans who brought forth immortal mischief:
Chronus with the tick of time brought fratricide
castrating his father Uranus from whose bollocks
Aphrodite was born of sea foam
and Zeus killed his father Chronus
to begin the war with Titans and thus beget
the mortal mischief of man
And in modernity James Lovelock & Lynn Margulies
chemist & microbiologist observing how intricately
intertwined were all systems on this earth
propose the name of ancients
for aggregate planetary identity
and the name is Gaia
Gaia! Gaia! Earth Mother
Gaia! Wide-bosomed Gaia! Ground of Being!
your mountains and your valleys and your plains
your fertile plains! Gaia--
the waters of your deserts and sweet bottom-grass
give life to life on you!
your oceanic womb with tides
to breathe your times your climates
and the moon to time your times!
And I who call you Gaia in my song
who mourn the damage done--Iii-yeh! Iii-yeh!
the world you peopled! the damage done!--
look to your handmaiden moon tonight
the harvest moon big-bellied and almost see
us colonizing there
and fighting wars shouting Mine
to mine and plunder! Mine to do
as I do! and forget
the desolate moon we visited
that showed us you Gaia
for the first time
you--the blue gem teeming
you--your oceans flowing
you--your jungles greening
you
flecked with foam
that spawned
our world
and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.
—Commander Frank Borman, Apollo 8, Dec 24, 1968
I know, I know, I’m one of those
who habitually sees the glass as broken
nevermind half empty
so, too, the deck as stacked by the last
few generations of homo sapiens
(non-sapientes!)
who simply accepted a bad hand
as what they were dealt by the dealer
in a rigged game—but
I will show you now just how much
of a cockeyed optimist I really am:
I hold fast to Gaia!
Hesiod recorded her 7th Century BCE
Verily at the first Chaos came to be,
but next wide-bosomed Gaia
the ever-sure foundations of all
the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus
and Gaia brought forth of herself
Uranus, the Sky to cover her
on every side and Ourea (Mountains), and Pontus (Sea)
without sweet union of love
O generative omnipotence!
Then Gaia lay with her brother Uranus to beget
the Titans who brought forth immortal mischief:
Chronus with the tick of time brought fratricide
castrating his father Uranus from whose bollocks
Aphrodite was born of sea foam
and Zeus killed his father Chronus
to begin the war with Titans and thus beget
the mortal mischief of man
And in modernity James Lovelock & Lynn Margulies
chemist & microbiologist observing how intricately
intertwined were all systems on this earth
propose the name of ancients
for aggregate planetary identity
and the name is Gaia
Gaia! Gaia! Earth Mother
Gaia! Wide-bosomed Gaia! Ground of Being!
your mountains and your valleys and your plains
your fertile plains! Gaia--
the waters of your deserts and sweet bottom-grass
give life to life on you!
your oceanic womb with tides
to breathe your times your climates
and the moon to time your times!
And I who call you Gaia in my song
who mourn the damage done--Iii-yeh! Iii-yeh!
the world you peopled! the damage done!--
look to your handmaiden moon tonight
the harvest moon big-bellied and almost see
us colonizing there
and fighting wars shouting Mine
to mine and plunder! Mine to do
as I do! and forget
the desolate moon we visited
that showed us you Gaia
for the first time
you--the blue gem teeming
you--your oceans flowing
you--your jungles greening
you
flecked with foam
that spawned
our world
on the grill
dog days done not gone
barbecue continues hot
fossils smoke the earth
barbecue continues hot
fossils smoke the earth
Gregory Bell writes because. He’s authored the hybrid poetry book, Looking for Will: My Bardic Quest with Shakespeare, and two award-winning plays. Honors include the 2019 Kowit Poetry Prize & 2023 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Prize. He facilitates Green Poets Workshop at Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA, is most recently published in Scientific American, and he now has a poem settled in for a long stay in the Athena lander, via NASA, on the moon.