Ecologia

Messages from the weather (April)

Last week I was in a rural place with limited internet access, so didn’t manage to post on Friday as usual.

This week I’m taking an interval away from essay-writing to share something else – a mode of wordcraft that

Perdita Finn

and

Clark Strand

call “ecologia”. Since March I’ve been taking part in their Whole Earth Animism course, and this is the mode we work in: observing and listening to the world around us, finding stories and messages that emerge from the ecology we’re part of.

I struggled a little to get the hang of it at first. In my earliest ecologia, I found myself continuing to place the locus of agency and personhood within myself (writing in the first person) rather than feeling into the perspective of beings we are trained to think of as inanimate. Even when I made an effort to acknowledge their consciousness, my attempts to work out what they were “saying” were clunky: overly logical, and centred on what they do for me or for people in general.

A shift came when Perdita emailed one week urging us to: “keep it SUPER SIMPLE. Note something about the weather… Then let your wild whimsy loose. What might this weather be saying to YOU? … just submit a noticing and a message. No need to try for something more elaborate.”

I’ve been doing this almost daily since then, as a morning practice when I sit outside with my first cup of coffee. I don’t make any claims to what follows being great poetry, but am sharing it as a record of some early attempts towards a more animistic way of engagement. Perhaps you, too, might find yourself open to wondering what the weather might be saying to you.

This image doesn’t relate to any of the ecologia below, but seemed appropriate.

---

21/4/25

Stillness and gentle dampness in the air.

A blanket of cloud across the sky,

drifting apart above me to hint at hazy blue.

On the grey car a sudden flash of gold –

The sun has emerged somewhere I cannot see,

Behind the rooftops at my back.

Attend to me – the weather says –

and unexpected change is possible.

---

22/4/25

Sunlight is making its way down

the thick hedge hung with tangles of creepers

As the sun rounds the rooftops behind me.

In the hedge’s hidden byways

Excitable sparrows chatter and flit.

Atop the hedge, greenery buds and opens to the sun –

its sides remain a mass of dry brown stems.

Change comes unevenly, always

in response to what

reaches us.

---

25/4/25

Here in the shade,

Chill and damp air.

There beyond its edge,

Heat and light.

Above, a gull flies toward the sun,

Gold shining through the rim of each wing.

A sparrow jumps to the top of its branch

from the tangled hedge,

returning my gaze.

What you see, says the weather,

is made of contrasts,

of opposites –

but movement between them is always happening,

always invited.

---

27/4/25

The light is different today –

our shaggy hedge cloaked

with a diaphanous golden haze.

The same hue illuminating the high white wall,

almost out of my sightline,

is a colour that exists nowhere else quite the same.

Sparrows bounce and shout in the hedge

and a gull flies away from the sun,

shrieking in awe and alarm.

If it were not for me, the weather asks,

How would you know

what glory looks like?

---

29/4/25

The sun warms my back:

Comfort is free.

---

30/4/25

Luminous terracotta,

Golden white,

Translucent maroon:

I can show you colours

you never knew you were,

says the Sun to the Earth.

---

If you like these, please click the heart or give me feedback in the comments! I’d love to post more ecologia in future (perhaps a regular monthly slot?) so let me know if they resonate.