Books
WILD EARTH
"Cindy Ellen Hill, a brave new voice in contemporary poetry, has successfully combined the elegance and style of the classic sonnet with the themes and freshness of our contemporary natures."
—Dan Close, author of What the Abenaki Say about Dogs
I dream in early darkness of a wild
earth, a land alive, a lithic hand to
hold my wild soul, sylvan pools that sing
of pregnant passion, maiden's blush of rose
in meadow bare upon the morning's breast.
Waking in the woodland glade I watch them,
watch the living, furred and flying, growing,
walking, soaring, stalking--watch and wonder
willingly, while willing You to whisper;
waiting for a word of reason, for cause,
for season, what would be the start or end,
between works of creation and of men.
Drinking in the dawn's breath I embrace them;
Unlike Adam, I refuse to name them.
ELEGY FOR THE TREES
"Cindy Ellen Hill, poet, invites the reader into her forest of trees, closely observed. Her knowledgeable play with sonnet form and theme causes them to intertwine magically, compellingly, to lead through a gathering of portraits of individual trees and threatened tree species. Her collection of poems, beginning to end, is a gift."
—Kathleen McKinley Harris, author of Earth Striders
I Sing in Witness
I sing now the death of trees. I sing now,
loudly and longly, reaching and hollow.
I sing swaying grey rainfall of sorrow.
I sing each fallen limb, each snapping bough.
Boles smoulder into ash. I smudge my brow,
mark this grove of memory as hallowed.
Forests, like abandoned fields, lay fallow,
empty. I sing in witness, I avow
to voice moss in their tender cushioned mounds,
to urge mushrooms through ghostly tangled roots,
to hold aloft the grape and trumpet vine,
to cry aloud sage-rough shield-lichen rounds,
shout dappled shade across blackberry shoots.
Whose voice will sing for trees, if not for mine.