Commemorate Earth Day! Today, I read Mary Oliver’s poem, “Spring,” as the inspirational reading for my meditation group.
A couples of lines jumped out from the poem, “There is only one question; how to love this world.” And “Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music. . .” Mary Oliver, Devotions (New York: Penguin Press, 2017), 317-318.
In response, I wrote the following haikus:
How to love this world—
Be God’s hands and nurture it.
It’s your home, you know.
#
Do you see this world
As your home? Your place to grow?
Smother it with love.
#
Love is the balm that
Heals this world. Don’t be stingy.
Smother it with love.
#
I gave you this world.
Be a good steward of it.
Others will follow.
The lines from Mary Oliver’s poem ignited some deep thoughts in me about this world, our earth home. As always, let’s make the love the answer, and we have to think about the future and our kin who inherit whatever we do today to keep this earth spinning.
Larada Horner-Miller is a poet, essayist and accomplished multi-genre author who holds a bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in Spanish and a master of education degree in Integrating Technology into the Classroom. She is the accomplished author of six award-winning biographies, historical fiction, memoir, and poetry works plus three self-published cookbooks.
Her sixth book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, is available in paperback and four e-book formats. Larada offers the reader the opportunity to look back at 2020 and the global pandemic through her prose and poetry through reading, then reflecting and responding. She addresses all the emotions she felt during this overwhelming time and leads the reader through to a self-access: bitter or better?
Her fifth book is the authorized memoir and biography of world-renown square dance caller Marshall “Flip” Flippo. Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flippo is available now in hardback, paperback and four e-book formats. Recently Just Another Square Dance Caller won two awards: Book Excellence Awards Finalist and Silver award for eLit. Book Awards.
Another recent book of hers, A Time to Grow Up: A Daughter's Grief Memoir has won many awards including being a 2018 Book Excellence Awards Finalist in the Memoir category at the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and a 2018 Independent Press Distinguished Favorites Award in the Memoir category. Horner-Miller has also been a past national presenter at the Women Writing the West Conference and is currently the creator of Memoir Workshops for others who want to share their family’s legacies through words.
Larada and her husband, Lin, enjoy being nestled in the mountains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, near the village of Tijeras. When not writing books, this passionate, energetic, and enthusiastic woman loves to spend time kicking up her heels at square dancing gatherings, traveling, knitting, and reading.
As co-manager of her family’s southeastern Colorado ranch, she enjoys spending time exploring her family’s historic ranch and reminiscing with her brother and his children about their mom, dad, and granddad.
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