Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
We need more geology in school. Or perhaps ecology. Probably both. If we are to survive, we need to understand who and what we are, and for that we need to understand this world that made us. We are earthly beings. We are small parts of a small planet on an average star in the… Continue reading Home Soil
The seventh moon of the year is the Flower Moon, or the Faerie Moon. It is new between 23 April and 21 May. It is full between 7 May and 4 June. This is the burgeoning time. Bulbs are flowering. Forsythia is a wash of gold. Lilacs are sending scent out on the breeze. Bees… Continue reading Flower Moon in Eclipse
i came across a forgotten sugar bush craggy boles as wide as doors to another time bark cracking and sap-dampened with abandoned tap-holes writing jagged lines layers of leaf mould counted more than my years and heartwood ringed older than human endeavors on this inhospitable hillside primordial mother trees these and all about each grand… Continue reading the lesser species
We have a fraught relationship with trees. To mask our utter dependence on the green world and to justify taking whatever we desire from the planet, we have stripped even the possibility of consciousness from other life forms, woody ones in particular. We name them resources, so that the value of trees is determined only… Continue reading Arbor Day
April 25th is a complicated date. It is St Mark’s Day, which is honored with a wide variety of celebrations; and it is Robigalia, an ancient Roman festival intended to propitiate the god — or demon — of wheat rust and thus ensure a good harvest. These disparate themes may actually be related. Mark the… Continue reading A Red-Letter Day
what do you see with your eyes trained on a tree? what do you hear when your ears take in birdsong? what do you feel when your fingers touch soil? turn questions around so that what becomes who when you ponder them know that they regard you we sing the same songs we bear the… Continue reading no difference
Our culture is confused about food and farming. We believe that we are in a power-over relationship with the world, and particularly with our food. We are so enamored with dominance that we've lost sight of the inherent partnership between plants and animals, between prey and predator, between the farmer and the fields. Both sides… Continue reading A Confusion of Grain Gods
It is time for regeneration. Nests of new life in satiny shells — white, blue, green, pink, yellow, speckled, mottled, striped and solid. No doubt our urge to paint chicken eggs for the late spring holidays is inspired by the wondrous works of art in every nest. And it’s also not surprising that humans have… Continue reading Spring Eggs
I wrote the core of this decades ago, when I was a different person. But it seemed relevant this year... or maybe it's always been. man's loyalty they lay their robes at his feet they sang glories to his name they waved supple fronds in adulation hailing the new king — the moon waxed full… Continue reading Palm Sunday
I listen to quite a lot of music. Not much of it feels rooted or even connected to Earthly life. I'm beginning to wonder if many of our problems stem from an inability to celebrate what is life-affirming. Maybe we need an aesthetic of the hearth and home, of the constant and congenial and communitarian.… Continue reading We Need New Songs…
By My Solitary Hearth 