This month I am writing poems in response to the ideas, connections and echoes between All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson and Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.
At its heart, reciprocity is the idea that all beings, plant and animal, “facilitate one another in beneficial ways,” Janine Benyus writes in her essay “Reciprocity” (All We Can Save, p. 9). For several years, we have been witnessing reciprocity in action outside our kitchen window. The stump pictured below is all that’s left of a beech tree that died. Worried that it could fall on our house, my husband and son cut it down, but never got around to digging out the stump. I’m glad they left it to finish its natural cycle.
Reciprocity
Red-crested pileated woodpeckers
Excavate the stump of an old beech,
Carving cavities, feasting on
Insects who’ve settled inside the
Pitted, pulpy wood, all that
Remains of a towering tree, where a multitude of
Organisms still thrive, a
Community
Inextricably intertwined, supporting,
Tending, nourishing one another for
Years to come.
Draft © Catherine Flynn, 2022
Previous NPM posts:
Reading to the Core 
Read this poem aloud. So many wonderful word choices. Pitted, pithy wood. Your stump has become a sculpted home center for a cycle of life.
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Catherine,I liked the alliteration you used in your poem and the idea of a community growing in the stump. Happy National Poetry Month.
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