MARCH MUSINGS

March event for Author, Nina

Northwest Regional Library, 150 Coddingtown Center, SR
March 20, Wed  11 AM

Nina will read from her new book If You Lived In Sam's Neck
and will answer questions about homesteading in northern California.  The book describes, in poetic style, a family's commitment to an adventure in living close to nature during the early seventies on a forty-acre homestead in northern California.  It is a read-aloud, easy picture book with photographs to share the gifted rewards of a back to nature lifestyle.   For children ages 5 & up, accompanied by a parent of caregiver. 

On Friday evening March 1,  I was invited to share my poetry at the 100 Thousand Poets for Change at the Gaia Restaurant in Santa Rosa.  Following are the poems I read for you to enjoy:

( my anti fossil fuel poem, without mentioning any names!!)

Cold Full Moon in January

Out on my dark balcony,
I decided to talk to Grandmother Moon.
She answered me, "I am the eye to watch the world."
What do you see?
"I see a planet that is aging,
tired from the abuse and raping of her land.
I see the polluted ocean waters
struggling to survive.
I am the ruler of the tides
that could sweep and flood your coastal lnnds."

So, the eye of the moon is watching.
The eyes of the world are watching.
Grandmother ancestor knows all.
Listen, listen, if you can.
The beat of the drum, the chants in the mountains,
the flowers waiting to bloom.
The cold moon light reaches me.
It enters into my bones, my breath, my veins.
The message is imprinted.
Another cycle begins, with pure seeds for planting.
The wind's soft power and Grandfather Sun to light the way.

c 2013 Nina Tepedino

EULOGY

The spirits of salmon skeletons
floating in the dammed streams,
never again to be fertilized or caught.
We eat what is ancient.
We eat it to extinction.
We eat it until it becomes a ghost of the sea.
A burial ground for a species
so willing to be food for us
in an innocent and naive act
of trusting our voracious appetites
for destroying what is wild.
What gives to us, but can't---forever.  

c 2008 Nina Tepedino

                                          Bodega Head on Thanksgiving Day, 2012

MIGRATION


Whale watchers are mammals, too.
We all nurse our young,
expelled from the womb in placenta blood,
nurtured by instinct,
filled with water,
the fluid of life.
The mammals who killed mammals to near extinction,
now searching for spout and breech
to fill the camera lens.
Do the whales watch us watch them?
Do their memories forgive our killing ways?
We gaze out to sea,
braced against the ocean wind
to face forward off the Bodega cliff edges,
that hold the onlookers
for the annual mammalian migration.

c 2011 Nina Tepedino