Feature for Earth Month and Poetry Month: A space to contemplate resurrection and life

A space to contemplate resurrection and life

By Brian Nixon

I composed each of these poems with the Earth Day focus in mind. After church, I walked home and settled into our enclosed front garden. Before me, pink and maroon roses stood in quiet bloom, while on the ground lay scattered confetti from our grandchildren’s Easter exploration.

With music by the German-British composer Max Richter playing softly, I began sketching images and reflections in my pocket notebook. Once the preliminary drafts were complete, I moved inside to refine them on the computer.

The piece accompanying my writing was Richter’s Perihelion. In astronomical terms, perihelion marks the point in an elliptical orbit when the sun is closest to the Earth, typically occurring in the depths of winter, around January. This made its contrast with the warmth and renewal of spring even more fitting.

For Eastertide, I drew upon the fifty-day span between Easter and Pentecost as a symbolic frame, a space to contemplate resurrection and life. It became a meditation not only on Christ’s rising, but also on the natural rhythms of the world, where death gives way, once more, to rebirth.

Perihelion

By Brian Nixon

These pink flowers,
wind-shaped,
time-pollinated,
trace an elliptical longing,
bathed in sun.

Is it the cello—
that quiet arc of sound—
the measured circumference
of motion in relation
to the air?

Or simply spring,
whispering farewell
to the night.