☀ Today's Poem: "Assume the Milk-White" Amy Beeder

"A force of energy swirls around her as she sweeps into the Brisbane cafe, fresh from her daily 9km run. The stick is a tokotoko, a Māori symbol of status and authority, given to the celebrated scholar poet Selina Tusitala Marsh when she became New Zealand’s poet laureate in 2017. She carries it everywhere, a talisman not of war but of words. 'We Polynesians love the materiality of these objects because they carry a story and they carry a spirit,' Marsh says. 'So the more they are touched, the more they are spoken to, the more they build their own genealogy and story.'"
via THE GUARDIAN

"Before the first Earth Day, way back in 1967, Merwin was speaking for animals and for biodiversity, and sounding a warning of the coming human extinction. Now as we live into the age of the Anthropocene, more and more likely to be the last age to be given a name, his warning is no less grave. Was he heard then? Is he heard now? Perhaps not widely, but how much does that matter? Merwin speaks prophetically and politically, still, addressing everyone, one at a time.”