A REFUGE FOR POETS WHO WRITE IN THE LYRIC TRADITION,
WITH RHYME AND METER, WITH OR WITHOUT MUSIC
|
EVERY LAND IS BEAUTIFUL
East of the Pecos River
Lies the Mescalero Plain,
With mesquite, scrub oak and yucca
On a dune and swale terrain;
With sinkholes, disappearing streams
And caverns and salt lakes,
Jackrabbits and coyotes,
Packrats and rattlesnakes.
Some think of this as desert;
Others would not call it such,
With a foot or more of rain per year
And sometimes twice as much.
There’s not much surface runoff
On this semi-arid land,
And what does not evaporate
Simply soaks into the sand.
With water tanks and windmills
For the brahma bulls and cows,
They use the land for grazing,
Contented as they browse.
The air is crisp, the land is spacious
As the sun falls from the sky.
You can almost touch the stars and moon
As the wild coyotes cry.
Every land is beautiful
If simply left alone.
Every species has the right
To the conditions it has known.
The earth does not exist
As a possession of our own.
Every land is beautiful
If simply left alone.
On a cool September sunrise
You can watch the morning star;
Rainbow light at the horizon,
You can forget just where you are.
But some have lost their vision
And they’d have the world at war;
I’ll stand here in this desert.
I know it’s worth fighting for.
Every ant and gila monster,
Each coyote, every snake,
Is much more dear in the sight of God
Than all the bombs we make.
Every prickly bush of mesquite,
Every scrub oak in the sand,
Calls to common sense to stop
The poisoning of this desert land.
Every land is beautiful
If simply left alone.
Every species has the right
To the conditions it has known.
The earth does not exist
As a possession of our own.
Every land is beautiful
If simply left alone.
Eugene, Oregon, 1985
(lyrics co-authored by Bill Homans)
|
|