Haiku - Blue
with big blue spruce for Joanna Macy
HOW SUNSET STOOD STILL
WHERE CORVIDS LIT HIGH ON SPRUCE,
FELLED FAST TO A TUNE.
On the morning of Wednesday, June 18, 2025, I watched helplessly as a big healthy Colorado blue spruce (fondly Blue) was felled to make room for an Accessory Dwelling Unit in my neighbor’s backyard. I was in the daily habit of giving thanks for Blue’s presence, now missed as steadily.
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This haiku with Blue is dedicated to scholar, author, teacher, and deep ecologist Joanna Macy for her service. Joanna died peacefully in her home on Saturday, July 19, 2025. My heart is with Joanna’s dearest who now miss her steadily.
My teacher Lucille Bertuccio (1936-2016) and a Council of All Beings first connected me with Joanna’s work some thirty years ago. But my clearest sense of Joanna is from an intimate nuclear guardianship workshop held at Naropa University following the March 11, 2011 Fukushima Disaster. That weekend in June 2011, Joanna was alive with the familiar force of a tsunami tempered for effectiveness.
In a tribute to Joanna published at Trcycle.org, Joan Duncan Oliver concludes “[Joanna’s] foresight and pragmatic thinking will live on in a vast network of students, colleagues, and collaborators pledged to building a life-sustaining world through personal and societal transformation.”
Let it be. Please see Joanna’s website to learn about her work: JoannaMacy.net. Also see Pamela Haines’s Friends Journal review of Joanna’s book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power co-authored by Chris Johnstone: Active Hope review.
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Regarding the importance of big trees in urban forest, please read this Better Bozeman Coalition post: Trees—An Essential Part of Bozeman’s Existing and Future Neighborhoods.
© 2025 Megan Hollingsworth | All Rights Reserved