The human body and human consciousness have been knitted together over billions of years by processes inherent in the expanding universe and over millions of years by relationships within ecological systems that likewise have emerged in this way. Our existence is delicately suspended within ecosystems delicately suspended within macrocosm.
Over a few thousand years, however, we’ve built technological and economic systems and governmental and religious institutions and habits of mind that, too often, are far out of sync with these realities. Tragedy is unfolding. Larger tragedy looms.
We are held in a long, long embrace of dust and gas, galaxies, stellar cores, rock, rivers and seas, soil, vegetation, fungi, microbes, fellow animals large and small. We are more profoundly and achingly home than we have dared imagine. And in this moment, this brief moment, we recognize we must decide whether to abide, whether to return the embrace. In this brief moment, we come to awareness of a larger self – astonished, smitten, reeling, writhing.
Prayers of the New Earth is a new, unpublished collection of poems and photographs.
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Where to see Prayers of the New Earth as a collection of framed prints
Jam on Hawthorne, Portland, OR, October through December, 2025 (a few selected pieces)
West Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Portland, OR, January through February, 2026 (Sunday mornings)
Previous venues
Connection to Land ecological arts show, Snohomish, WA, 2025 (selected pieces)
Tazza D’Oro, Pittsburgh, PA, 2024 (selected pieces)
To order a high-resolution, full-color print
See ordering info at bottom of this page
The pieces are shown below approximately as displayed, except as noted
These poems and photos are original work by a living being; not generated by AI. They are copyrighted and are not to be reproduced without written permission of Jeff Howard.
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Among and within
Here, among and within,
as you and I have ever been
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On display as 11 x 14″ (framed)
Arrival
Leave my bones in the embrace
of gravity and soil where
they have always been
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Poem published in Moonflake
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On display as 11 x 13″ (framed)
Beauty, falling
This terrible beauty
falling from the sky,
rising from the mist
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On display as 14 x 17″ (framed)
Breath
a pattern that abides
even when attention wanders
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On display as 11 x 18″ (framed)
Bringing down
bringing down, no less, the bringing down itself
as it wraps into the wheat and sun
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On display as 9.5 x 18.25″ (framed)
Come back
iridescent grackles by the hundreds
unfold a raucous, chittery chorus
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Poem forthcoming in The Fourth River
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On display as 20 x 25″ (framed with mat)
(Dis)order dancing
the universe has encountered
such innocence before
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On display as 15 x 19″ (framed)
Dream a river
and, unnoticed, the world folds
upon itself as it always has
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Poem published in The Ecological Citizen
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On display as 17 x 24″ (framed with mat)
Everything hopeful remains
Down to stone contours
bathed in warm rain
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On display as 13 x 22″ (framed with mat)
Gathering Day
Rituals that remember
what came before
and what comes next
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Poem published in Unearthed
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On display as part of
3-poem, 2-photo framed set.
Available as shown here.
Lift
draw us upward through entangled root hairs and mycelia,
my limbs and yours
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On display as 14 x 18″ (framed)
Nameless
across the chasm,
a yearning
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On display as 14 x 18″ (framed)
Of
We are of
this place
this water
this soil
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On display as 12 x 16″ (framed)
Prayer of Presence
This Earth — this Earth we disdain —
distilled us into being
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On display as part of
3-poem, 2-photo framed set.
Available as shown here
Return
circle upon circle,
limb upon limb
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On display as 11 x 15″ (framed)
Ritual of cairns
Let this cairn
recall starlings
hurling themselves …
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On display as part of
3-poem, 2-photo framed set.
Available as shown here.
Ritual of curvature
Write it, when you are able,
in the gesture of clouds and wind
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Poem published in Unearthed
—–
On display as part of
3-poem, 2-photo framed set.
Available as shown here (this photo
not included in venue display).
Silence
behind and beyond it all lay a great unsaid thing
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On display as 16 x 20″ (framed)
Source
Beauty, loomed
in the mathematics of the universe
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On display as 11 x 14″ (framed)
Staggering
Staggering into an abyss
of disregarded cousins
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On display as 10 x 20″ (framed)
Steady State
Each thing takes us to the last,
each imperfect thing
resonating and
ringing into the infinite
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Poem and photo forthcoming in Amethyst Review
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On display as 16 x 20″ (framed)
Subduction
Wheeling above this live edge,
where tectonic masses quiver
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On display as 15 x 18″ (framed with mat)
The first sound
Hear it pealing
through the darkness
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Poem on display as part of
3-poem, 2-photo framed set.
Available as shown here.
Tree, standing
The tree answers the world
standing just so
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On display as 17 x 20″ (framed)
Turning
godness big enough for
handprints on cave walls, thousand-foot
hummingbird sketches on the Nazca Plain
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On display as 15 x 17″ (framed)
Unfolding
Patient ancient urge
of silts and fines,
of granites and shales
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On display as 11 x 14″ (framed)
Yet
because remembering is built in
like a scar, like a sinew in the neck, like a ridge of bone
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Poem on display as part of
3-poem, 2-photo framed set.
Available as shown here (this photo
not included in venue display).
How to order a high-resolution, full-color print
Print sold without frame and mat. Please plan carefully.
Background color approximately as displayed at venue and as shown above (except by special arrangement)
11 x 14″ to 11 x 17″ — $45
Larger than 11 x 17″ — $35/square foot
Special arrangements — $ negotiated
Price includes shipping to U.S. address in postal tube
Size may affect layout. Layout that differs significantly from what is shown above will be presented for your approval before printing.
Allow 3-4 weeks for delivery.
Questions? Send e-mail to PrimordialPoetry@gmail.com
To order:
- Pay designated amount by Venmo, using QR code or account name shown above (get in touch if another arrangement is necessary)
- Complete order info using this form
Questions? Problems? Send e-mail to PrimordialPoetry@gmail.com
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