December 2020 – Tiny Seed Literary Journal

Lessons from the Wild…

Deep Ecology of the Great Smoky Mountains

31 Dec 202019 Dec 2020

Once again, birds singing in the rain, and though I’m far from home, I’m home again – this time in America’s most visited park. Looking out from my…

Lessons from the Wild

If the Earth had hands

31 Dec 202030 Dec 2020

The earth seemed to shake It shook as if to tell me to stop, to quit it. I couldn’t feel it of course. Once I did it again, the earth…

Lessons from the Wild…

Nature’s Layers

30 Dec 202029 Dec 2020

Nature's Layers Čavljak, Bosnia and Herzegovina Photograph by Micaela Edelson Hailing from Salem, Oregon, Micaela Edelson is a passionate writer and photographer aiming to shed light on humanity’s prioritization of…

Lessons from the Wild

Milkweed

30 Dec 202024 Dec 2020

Photograph by Greg Clary Greg Clary is Professor Emeritus of Rehab and Human Services at Clarion University, Clarion PA. His photographs have been published in The Sun Magazine, Looking…

Lessons from the Wild…

Gorgeous Envy

30 Dec 202027 Dec 2020

If I had a diamondback terrapin I would name her Spartina after the brack-water grass where her kind nest If I had a green tree frog I would name her…

Lessons from the Wild

They Say

29 Dec 202028 Dec 2020

They say before the first sunrise There must have been a germ of light, Some blossoming of dawn Muting the darkness, Some hint of knife-edged rock, And the splash of…

Lessons from the Wild…

The Return

29 Dec 202019 Dec 2020

Stiff, stifled, stuffed Barricaded and boxed in. A chair-shaped caricature of myself, Imprisoned in flesh, slowly dying, To get out. I did not know. I did not know,…

Lessons from the Wild

Spring Thunderstorm

And so this farmhouse. Not the worst place to weather a pandemic-storm as well as watch the old fashioned-spring-thunder type dinging up the apple tree below this bedroom window. I…

Lessons from the Wild…

Addendum to the Canticle of the Creatures Written on the California North Coast

28 Dec 202028 Dec 2020

From a blue so deep the sky burns in envy, to a gentle gray a shade darker than the compact clouds above, every few hours you don a different dress,…

Lessons from the Wild…

Divination

28 Dec 202023 Dec 2020

I try to read the hieroglyphs of geese scribbled across the clouds, a wavering message moving south. This means something, I think, this shorthand of theirs, but I am unversed…

Lessons from the Wild…

Growing Idea

Photograph by Hugh Findlay Hugh Findlay writes a lot, sometimes publishes, and would rather be caught fishing. He mows his lawn on Saturdays, naps daily, and reverses his underwear in…

Lessons from the Wild

After the Storm

27 Dec 202026 Dec 2020

Battered by wind and deafened by thunder, convinced you’ll never make it through alive. Huddled in shelter you’ve hidden under, until you decide that you will survive. The raindrops slow…

Lessons from the Wild…

An Olfactory History of Cantaloupes

27 Dec 202027 Dec 2020

Cantaloupe sprouts smell like fully-formed cantaloupes when I water them. The air in the greenhouse is already heavy with moisture; the thermometer says 90 degrees by 9am. Water hits the…

Lessons from the Wild…

Message from a Snake

27 Dec 202019 Dec 2020

When FEAR presents itself: Be in the moment. Take a deep breath. Listen to your heart. Don’ t allow FEAR to blur your vision on this journey through life!…

Lessons from the Wild

Cottonwood Seeds

26 Dec 202024 Dec 2020

A million of them weigh less than three pounds. No wonder they lift away on the wind, miniature paratroopers buoyed by filaments finer than a spider’s web and carried for…

Lessons from the Wild…

Delicate Geometry

26 Dec 202023 Dec 2020

A spider never sees its web. Not really. Not as we see it. The delicate geometry of it — The implications. There’s No real cunning, is there? No Stratagem. Every…

Lessons from the Wild…

Wilderness Dreams

25 Dec 202019 Dec 2020

In the dream he had, he tells me I am sitting on the front steps, my mother The step below, leans against my legs. We are laughing, the way…

Lessons from the Wild

Cat & Mouse

25 Dec 202024 Dec 2020

Photographs by Marcus Fields. Marcus Fields was born in Michigan and attended Michigan State University’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, where he received a bachelor’s degree…

Lessons from the Wild

Wild Proposition

Wild Proposition With this October snow, the robin on the post outside my window glances at my evening cocktail, not impressed, she eyes the pale worm at the bottom of…

Lessons from the Wild…

Inspiration from the tree roots

24 Dec 202023 Dec 2020

Just like the tree... our lives are uprooted and exposed. Our wounds are revealed... not for us to suffer, but for us to heal them. Lower frequencies cannot exist in…

Lessons from the Wild…

Horseshoe Crab

23 Dec 202018 Dec 2020

I read about its ancient history in the local paper. Now, here was one stranded outside the motel, its underside exposed like an offering to seagulls or the sun. How…