Paradise Found

Paradise Found

Paradise Found Spring Edition Volume 1 Number 4

Publisher...Bathsheba Monk Editor...Joanne Fanny Barry foundparadise8@gmail.com Allentown, Pennsylvania Tulum, Mexico Cover Photo by Sharon “Shaz” Smith Shaz is a world traveler, adventurer, and photographer. She recently published a book of photos from visits across the African continent spanning 30 years as well as a memoir about her ill-fated romance in Zimbabwe.

This photo is of a Maasi man gathering elephant dung to make a fire.

Contents Page 5

Photo by Sharon “Shaz” Smith

Page 6 Mother Knows Best by Bathsheba Monk Page 8 Photo by Jane Noel Page 9 Home by Joanne Fanny Barry Page 11

Photo by Jane Noel

Page 12 Volcanoes by Julie Griswold Page 13 Photo by Julie Griswold Page 14 Spring Fields by G. Bruce Boyer

Page 17 Mother Dear by Dancing Bear Page 19 Photo by Bathsheba Monk Page 20

The Time Was Exactly Two Forty-Five on a Monday Page 23

Eggs produced by Vera’s chickens

Page 26 A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman from one of the Orion spacecraft’s windows after completing the translunar injection burn on April 2, 2026. The image features two auroras (top right and bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun. Credit: NASA

Mother knows best

As a toddler, “out in the yard” meant a mostly muddy 100 square foot patch of grass with a sandbox in the middle where my brothers and I would carve roads and overpasses, landing strips, and other things that didn’t interest me. So I would stumble to the muddy patch and eat dirt.

Ole mother earth. Yum. Everyone was appalled, of course.

My mother gave me a cookie to distract me from the dirt eating. But it did no good. I held it up, so it wouldn’t get dirty, and continued to eat dirt.

Not something you brag about.

I probably shouldn’t be telling you this even now.

Much later, I read that if a kid eats dirt, it’s a good thing. There are all kinds of things in there that you need. Microbes. Minerals. Things you don’t get from cookies.

It’s the reason I take my house cats outside for walks. There are microbes in the earth that cats need to thrive. And at 13 years old, they’re kickin’ it.

Mother always knows best.

The theme of this issue of Paradise Found is Spring/Dirt/Earth In a world and time where we’re looking for something to connect us, the answer is right under our feet. We are children of Gaia, the expression of life’s urge to be born.

You are here to experience life on this earth in this time. I don’t know what the life force is or what it wants from us, if it wants anything at all, and neither do you. But let’s turn the tables: we need the earth for everything. Food, for starters. Water. Atmosphere.

Even connection. When I was eating this dirt, my brothers were busy digging through the sand “to China” they said. This was the only thing that interested me enough to abandon eating the dirt and pick up the cookie, interested in our brothers on the other side of the earth.

Little did I know then, that they were digging too—to find us.

We’re all in this together. Earth. Let’s be good to her.

Bathsheba Monk

Home

“Just come home,” she told me. I stopped crying long enough to say, “Thanks,” then “I love you,” and then a heartfelt, “Take care.” The connection dropped. But not really. An echo of home lingered in my consciousness joining a gentle activation in the solar plexus chakra, manipura, a warmth building confidence and self esteem. I closed my eyes and felt the rivulets tears had formed on my cheeks and my chin.

The echo repeated, “Just go home.”

Where is that now?

Anxiety swiftly returned, like a spring rain in the tropics.

I’d done everything wrong. Definitely unable to get it right, whatever that is. Right had escaped me for years. I buried my hands in the dog’s fur as she pushed her head into my chest as if to say, “C’mon. You’ve done a few things very much ok.” I pushed back, rubbing my forehead into hers, “Yes, very much ok. But nothing so great.”

She left, bored with my depression and my inability to acknowledge that ok was, well, ok. So, I sat my body down firmly on the ground and stuck my toes in the grass, not caring if a spider or bee or even a scorpion were disturbed by my neediness. My toes squirmed in, wide and then my fingers joined them, grabbing at the dirt. I sunk my nails in, knowing I’d have to dig the dark lines out. But I dug anyway, needing grounding, needing support. Unable to manage it, I let the earth take over.

She can, you know.

When it all becomes too much, way too much, when you feel you can’t go home, shed into her. She absorbs our negativity, our fear, all the imbalance. And she gives that confidence, that activation of your energy. Don’t worry.

She can take it. She’ll hold you. She’ll remind you, ok is enough. In fact, she’ll help you know ok is more than enough. She’s the mother after all.

She’s earth. And she’s home.

Joanne Fanny Barry

Volcanoes, like people, exist on various spectrums, each one with its limits, moodiness and variability. I work mostly on the grey ones; gas rich, utterly explosive, self destructive mountains. When they blow, they explode in glassy shards and pieces of silica-rich rock that cut the air and anything in their path. But there’s that spectrum where the hot crimson red is effusive with molten lava and incandescent fire fountains that light up the sky and the imagination. They embody primal energy, like this red one I worked on in 2018. You see only one of the two dozen vents that activated along a fissure in a residential neighborhood down rift from Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawai’i. People loose homes but typically not their lives in the staggering heat of the red volcanoes. But the greys don’t give you that second chance. Best to leave when your own primal intuition or the authority says. Or you’ll become part of their fiery flow.

Julie Griswold Volcanologist

Spring Fields G. Bruce Boyer Spring fields were seductive lands Scattered in the city’s unplanned gaps Not yet claimed by builder’s hands, Or planner’s eyes on gridded maps.

Fields of budding flowers and gremlins Up from the earth’s balmy soil.

Even when rocks bruised the shins Of children running wild with joy, Fields were gifts to an urban boy.

Mother Dear Dancing Bear

I was born in the midst of many children.

But she was there for me when I arrived My mother.

She cared for me, our famlly and too many others I could not count.

She cared for rich and poor. The strong and the weak.

She cared for us all.

Stature and faith did not matter.

And when she saw me she would smile, her bright warm glow filling me with love and nourishment.

As I grew, she continued to nurture me, feeding me, providing water, shelter and safety.

She never asked for anything in return. She loved me with all her heart Such a warm and caring mother. She was my rock.

Body

Those are days, long ago, I will never forget.

And in my heart will keep.

But as I grew older. I needed more.

I took from her. I stole when she wasn’t looking.

Mocked her, betrayed her.

I lied to her. She knew, but said not a word

Today I am old and past my prime As I look back, I see the love that has shone on me all the days of my life But she, too, is sick and ohh so tired.

She’s been used and abused.

She bears the scars of many pains, her body worn by all that used her.

And as I look back over all these years. I say thank you to the mother of us all.

I say thank you, Mother Earth.

The time was exactly two forty-five on a Monday

Blue humid day Our grass was over the legal limit Of 6 inches, More like 12, When I noticed a sliver of grass Stretching over the others Trying to get my attention, Beating in time with my heart.

I moved the lawnmower from sight It’s rude to cut down a friend.

And no, it wasn’t because I was Tired of cutting grass Though I was.

And Although I had not previously thought Of a piece of GMO grass as a brother, Once I saw that it was kin, I think it may have even been a cousin That close!

I hid the evidence Of my rampage, Of my parricide And we became chummy.

Well, as chummy as a normal creature And a Frankenstein creature can be Tho I have since wondered The obvious.

“A blade of gress is a commonplace on Earth: on Mars it would be a miracle.”

Carl Sagan

“Green, how I want you, green.”

Federico García Lorca

View of Earth from Orion Spacecraft’ Window