NaPoWriMo # 25 - Green Fuse Ignites!

"The Green Fuse," at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Stamford, CT yesterday, was a moving event. The name was from Dylan Thomas quote - " The force that through the green fuse drives the flowers, drives my green age..."

Put together by professor Ralph Nazareth, and Poem Alley, the event included words delivered in Japanese by two survivors of Hiroshima, Takashi Morita and Junko Watanabe who asked us all to support a nuclear free future. It was an honor to hear their words.


The program included an a cappella duet sung by Dev Crasta and Rebeka Radna.  Ms. Radna wrote the music, for words from Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” .  Their pitch, blend  and voicing were excellent. A wonderful violinist, Darwin Shea performed four works by Bach. His playing was full of precision and restrained overarching emotion. Dale Shaw told a true story about silent witnesses frozen and unable to take action, and he drew out an analogy out as to how, in the face of environmental disaster today, we react in similar fashion.  Kate Heichler lead a group sing of  Woody Guthrie's tune, This Land is Your Land.

And that was just the first half of the program.  Ed Granger-Happ of the Fairfield Review, journalist Robert Masterson, and green party guy, Richard Duffee and Ralph Nazareth himself, and many others were among the readers I missed. (I had to be in Middletown for a Shijin event, along with Faith Vicinanza who read a Mary Oliver poem in the first half..)   A music finale was by David Balzano on guitar and Lloyd Gritz on drums. There were too many performers to be named herein, -including all of the folks from the Curley's Diner Tuesday night poetry gathering, and many guests.

Below my NaPoWriMo #25
The green fuse ignites.

with gentle arms

illumined in full spectrum
light like a sycamore's pale

upper-story at dawn
singing on every breeze,
with poems and
the motion of birds and men
interweaving, going forward:
tread lightly here,

our home, our nest, the earth.