Index of Essays and Poems
Poem: A New Year’s Wish for 2022: Published January 2022 Beachcomber
Poem: Instructions on Getting Ready to Die : Published in Every Writer’s Resource 2018
Essay: A Case for Optimism on Climate Change and Why What we Teach Matters Published by Utne Magazine Spring 2016.
Poem: I Saw Death Out Walking Published Beachcomber 2017
Poem: The Waking Hour
Instructions: On Getting Ready to Die
by Gayle Kellner
Please take off my watch
I won’t need time beyond the moment any longer
Followed by my earrings
There will be no one’s eye to catch,
No partner to impress
Slip off my shoes
Let me put my bare feet in the grass
One last time
Set my glasses for reading on the piles of books I’ll never get to
But stack my favorites near me
For they are among my closest friends
Wrap me in a sweater
In remembrance of those perfect chilly fall days
And take me outside
Let me feel the morning sun on my face
Unbutton my collar
Loosen my cuffs
That damn bra
I’ll need help with the clasp behind my back
Take off my belt
Lay all of these instruments of restraint aside
I will be restrained no longer
Why did I wait so long?
Photo by flyparade/iStock / Getty Images
Published Utne Magazine 2016
As an educator in a progressive, well funded school, I have the privilege of insights into the minds of many young people. But one heart wrenching trend is the loss of youthful optimism. In a recent conversation with a group of 11 and 12 year old students, many expressed a deep pessimism about the future, as a species and of the very viability of the planet itself. “Living is a want not a need,” one young girl recently told me. “The world would be better off without us,” said another. “We think we need to live but we don’t,” they echoed other students over the past few years. These were not lone voices or even the pessimism of teenage angst, but the genuine assessment of well off, educated, elementary age students. Children awash in media 24/7 do not have the luxury of the state of internal denial that most adults float in. They BELIEVE what they hear. They BELIEVE what we tell them. Belief is as powerful as truth in shaping opinion that leads to action -or inaction. Hope and idealism put into motion are the Earth's only chance to survive this manmade environmental disaster.
We as a species may not deserve to be saved, but virtually all life on this planet is non-human and does deserve our last best efforts to the very end, as do our innocent children. I’m not giving up as a teacher, a writer, a parent or a human; not because the truth is on my side, but because I am on the side of life. I plan on continuing not only to inform my students but to inspire them. They can make a difference. We all can make a difference and it is our responsibility to do so. My simple message to your readers is this: We, as the adults, have no right to give up. We must not allow the voices of our inner skeptics and realists to drowned out the whisper of idealism that is the birthright of children and the only hope for this world.
Gayle Kellner
Coordinator for Academically Advanced Students Bertschi School
Published in Utne Magazine Spring 2016
by G. G. Kellner
I saw Death out walking
I thought it would be silent
I turned to it,
”What did you expect?” It seemed to ask,
“A hooded figure in black”, I thought
“But no”, Death answered
“I am always here”
“All around you”
“Inseparable from Life”
Which initially I took to be the message-
Death is the silent majority
Life a little bell sounding,
for such a little time
I asked Death,
“Is this true?”
And the world answered back,
“Inseparable from Life,”
and the echo was taken up by
the cacophony of the waves
striking the shore,
The seabird dropping the shell,
on the hard rocks of the beach,
And the clouds dancing swiftly by
The Waking Hour
by Gayle Kellner
5:22 am daylight is just breaking
It is the Waking Hour
I rise early from my bed
Somewhere in the half light
between the dream world
and the one we occupy together
The only difference may be
One seems to be a private place
and the other shared
though visitors pass between, unbidden
All is as it is,
No more or less
The world has not yet been fractured
By our attempts to capture
Or communicate anything
I pour a cup of strong black tea
and go to sit on the porch
Three young otters
frolic in the waters of Colvos Passage
I secretly wish I had fur,
and buoyancy,
and such youthful energy
First their noses appear
Then the roll of their backs
Then finally,
a flip of their tails at the end of each dive
A joyful exuberance
The dogs are still sleeping
in their beds
near their people
waiting patiently or not
to start the day
Only the fishermen and the poets are up
The otters know this
So does the great blue heron
Stepping silently in the shallows
At the water’s edge
Waiting for her breakfast
To swim to her feet,
such faith in the world
The grey, glassy surface of the water,
is so quiet I can hear
the rhythmic push of air
beneath the wings of the Eagle
flying low to see what the Osprey has caught
for her breakfast
The Osprey has been reward in her headlong dive
into this briny inland sea,
She clutches a flounder in her talons
I can’t help but wonder
what the flounder is thinking?
Plucked from its salty world,
in one moment reaching heights
mankind took 600,000 years
to master- flight
A crane fly bumps wildly against a window pane
Impatient to be out in the wide world,
Not quite sure how he is kept from it by this invisible barrier
I open the window
and usher him on his way
I don’t know to where?
An appointment to keep I suspect
with the other crane flies
Secret worlds surround us
Stuck as we are within our own walls
the ones we understand,
and the ones perhaps we never will
In the distance I hear a dog bark,
a door open and then shut
The breeze from the north begins to ruffle
the feather smooth water
A slight rustling of the leaves murmurs,
“The day has begun”
The blue heron reaches up
like a ballet dancer on long legs
and gracefully takes to the sky
And I?
I am left here to follow her,
Only with my eyes