Insects on a bough, floating down river, still singing.
Kobayashi Issa, Japanese poet (1763-1828)
“This one line from Issa’s poem has become a mantra for me, every day I say it. I love that. Let me read it one more time. ‘Insects on a bough, floating down river, still singing.’ I feel like it’s where we are at this moment in time with climate justice, with the changes that we’re seeing around the earth. We don’t know what the future holds but we’re still singing and we still belong to a vibrant community. To me perhaps, the definition of consciousness is holding that song – Hope, faith, not just survival but to thrive together.”
Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist, environmentalist,
author of many books including
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
and The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography
of America’s National Parks
