So Much Evidence All the way to heaven is heaven ~ St Catherine of Siena Let’s say Catherine was right – just for today, let’s try believing it, all the way heaven. Let’s set aside all those negative vibes, put our energies into living simply, planting trees and milkweed, feeding watching listening to birds – living in harmony will all our nonhuman kin. All the way just might be heaven IF we could manage that tectonic shift – could become neutral as nature, taking it all in stride – death and grief – accept that our time on Earth will be brief yet all the way heaven IF we could learn to fly hawk-like in ever-widening circles, and be part mild part wild. But you scoff and say, Look at all the horror and terror along the way. I say yes, it’s true, but note who is to blame, and let the flame of the beauty of things (nature) light your way – all the way heaven. Seas and mountains, eagles and gulls, rainforests and Earth’s three poles. Behold the beauty, the intrinsic glory – is it not heavenly? So much evidence, let us just for today be convinced Catherine was right. And IF (when) the owl calls out tonight, accept her as gift, and lift up your arms to embrace heaven in this very time and place.
Diana Woodcock is the author of seven chapbooks and five poetry collections, most recently Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist) and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best of the Net nominee, she is the recipient of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award (for her sixth full-length manuscript, Heaven Underfoot), the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women (for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders), and the 2007 Creekwalker Poetry Prize. Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry’s role in the search for an environmental ethic.
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