Celebrate Writers, Nature & Community To make a donation to Watershed mail your donation to Poetry Flash or click the link below to donate via credit card or PayPal Dear Friend of Watershed, Please join us August 18, when the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival returns to Berkeley's Civic Center Park. For the past two years, the park has been closed for renovation. We're excited to be back with a program that inspires while conveying a sense of urgency for the environmental issues that confront us. I believe that poetry can comprehend the earth, providing insight and motivation for action. Featured this year is an outstanding list of poets, writers, and artists concerned about the "State of the Planet"&emdash;famed Beat poet Michael McClure with saxophonist George Brooks; Montana Poet Laureate Sandra Alcosser; author/ cultural historian Rebecca Solnit; Poetry Flash editor/poet Richard Silberg; poet/naturalist Maya Khosla; the Voices of the Watershed poets curated by Nevada City poet Chris Olander; and student and youth poets from River of Words and California Poets in the Schools. The Toad Pink band, with G.P. Skratz, Hal Hughes, and Jean Robertson, will play country blues music throughout the afternoon. There will also be a We Are Nature open reading as well as eco-updates from Ecocity Builders and the Ecology Center. The traditional pre-festival Strawberry Creek Walk will begin the celebration at 10 a.m. just inside the UC Berkeley campus at Oxford and Center Streets. You're invited to join our featured readers and environmentalists for a short hike along Strawberry Creek from the UC Campus through downtown Berkeley, tracing the route of the creek as it tunnels beneath the heart of the city to the site of the festival. Along the way, there will be poetry readings and presentations on "daylighting" and restoring the Creek. It is essential that the Watershed Festival remains free and public, encouraging diversity by providing equal access to all members of the community. Your support is needed to help cover the event's expenses. Each year, we produce a letterpress broadside of a poem by one of our featured readers. This year we've selected "Mare Frigoris" by Sandra Alcosser. She is the National Endowment for the Arts' first Conservation Poet for the Wildlife Conservation Society in collaboration with Poets House, New York. As a thank you, donations of $25 or more will receive this beautiful broadside. Please send your tax-edeuctible donation to: Watershed c/o Poetry Flash 1450 Fourth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 Thank you for your support, Robert Hass, U.S. Poet Laureate, 1995-1997 Mare Frigoris Coming home late spring night, stars a foreign Language above me, I thought I would know The moons like family, their dark plains---sea of Crises, sea of nectar, serpent sea. How quickly a century passes, Minerals crystalize at different speeds, Limestone dissolves, rivers sneak through its absence. This morning I learned painted turtles Sleeping inches below the streambank Freeze and do not die. Fifteen degrees Mare Frigoris, sea of cold, second Quadrant of the moon's face. I slide toward The cabin, arms full of brown bags, one light Syrups over drifts of snow. Night rubs An icy skin against me and I warm Small delicates---cilantro, primrose--- Close to the body. A hundred million Impulses race three hundred miles an hour Through seventeen square feet of skin and Gravity that collapses stars, lifts earth's Watery dress from her body, touches me With such tenderness I hardly breathe. ---Sandra Alcosser