Between Birdsong and Boulder – Poems on the Life of Gaia

Appendix to “Beyond Birdsong and Boulder”

The Six Days of Genesis 1

  1. Light and Dark
  2. Sky and Water
  3. Land and Plants
  4. Sun, Moon, Stars
  5. Fish and Birds
  6. Mammals (and Humans)

I do not take the days of creation to be literal days, nor as sequential ages. Rather, I see them as overlapping strokes in a vast and complicated tapestry of continuing creation. The creation story in Genesis 1 was written in verse with the cosmological understanding of its time. It conveys a timeless sense of awe, reverence, and gratitude.

The Five Ages of the Universe

  1. Primordial Era, 0 – 105 years (quarks, electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, photons)
  2. Stelliferous Era, 106 – 1014 years (stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, neutron stars, black holes)
  3. Degenerate Era, 1015 – 1039 years (dwarf stars, neutron stars, and black holes)
  4. Black Hole Era, 1040 – 10100 years (black holes only)
  5. Dark Era, 10101 – … (very diffuse matter)

*Fred Adams and Gregory P. Laughlin, “The Five Ages of the Universe, Inside the Physics of Eternity,” The Free Press, 1999.

The Four Eons of Earth

  1. Hadean, 4600 – 4000 Mya (earth, moon, first life)
  2. Archean, 4000 – 2500 Mya (crust, primitive cells)
  3. Proterozoic, 2500 – 542 Mya (bacteria, algae, fungi)
  4. Phanerozoic, 542 – 0 Mya (complex life)

* Mya = million years ago

Gaia

In Greek mythology, Gaia is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life: the primal Mother Earth goddess.

The mythological name was revived in 1979 by James Lovelock, in “Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.” The hypothesis proposes that living organisms and inorganic material are part of a dynamical system that shapes the Earth’s biosphere, and maintains the Earth as a fit environment for life. In some Gaia theory approaches, the Earth itself is viewed as an organism with self- regulatory functions.

* This note is excerpted from the Wikipedia article on Gaia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(mythology)

Mary Midgley on Gaia Theory:

“The idea of Gaia – of life on earth as a self-sustaining natural system – is not a gratuitous, semi-mystical fantasy. It … attacks deeper tangles which block our thinking. We are bewildered by the thought that we might have a duty to something so clearly non-human. But we are also puzzled about how we should view ourselves. Current ways of thought still tend to trap us in the narrow, atomistic, seventeenth-century image of social life which grounds today’s crude and arid individualism. A more realistic view of the earth can, i think, give us a more realistic view of ourselves as its inhabitants. …

“The issue is not just psychological; it affects the whole way of life. Our ideas about our place in the world pervade all our thought, along with the imagery that expresses them, constantly determining what questions we ask and what answers can seem possible.”

* From the Institute of Art and Ideas, https://iai.tv/ articles/15-ideas-that-inspired-the-worlds-leading- thinkers-auid-1272

Bibliography

Science Background:

“The Sacred Depths of Nature,” by Ursula Goodenough. Oxford University Press. 2023.

“The Ends of the World – Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions,” by Peter Brannen. HarperCollins, 2017.

“Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds,” by Thomas Halliday. Random House, 2023.

“The Next Supercontinent,” by Ross Mitchell, University of Chicago Press, 2023.

“A Brief History of Earth,” by Andrew H. Knoll. HarperCollins, 2021.

“The Sixth Extinction – An Unnatural History,” by Elizabeth Kolbert. Picador, 2014

“The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking),” by Katie Mack. Scribner. 2020.

Sources for Epigraphs in the Section Headers:

“There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness,” by Carlo Rovelli. Riverhead, May 2022. 

“The Star Thrower,” by Loren Eiseley. A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1978.

“The Origin of the Species,” by Charles Darwin.

“The Holy Bible” – I started with my tattered copy of the Revised Standard Version, but also drew quotes from the King James, Revised King James, and Modern English versions found on BibleGate online.

Allusions to Books, Poetry, and Scripture in my Poems:

T.S. Eliot once said that “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” I can’t aspire to stealing, but several poems in this collection do borrow. They may rephrase verses, evoke styles, or expand and reinterpret concepts found in certain books, poems, and biblical scripture. You may even notice a reference to the movie Casablanca.

Books and Manuscripts:

  • Isak Denesen, Out of Africa
  • Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species
  • Jack London, The Call of the Wild
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Poems and Songs:

  • Robert Frost, You Come Too
  • Emily Dickenson
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur
  • Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
  • William Butler Yeats, Easter 1916, The Second Coming, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West
  • St. Francis of Assisi, The Canticle of the Sun
Photo by Aubrey Cox

Scripture from the following books of the Bible:

  • Genesis 1-3, 12, 15
  • Ecclesiastes 3, 12
  • Job 38-41
  • Psalms 8
  • Lamentations
  • Isaiah
  • Jeremiah
  • Amos 1-2
  • Matthew 5, 18, 23, 26
  • Luke 19
  • John 1, 3
  • Romans 8