Earthwalking & Other Poems

Karen Ethelsdattars poems, written out of the politics of the heart and the depths of the spirit, speak to the eternal questions. What is it to be a woman, a daughter, a sister, a mother? What is it to be a person? What is it to be in love with the natural world? What is sacred? Connected to the earth, reaching toward the sky, embracing family and friends and stranger and fellow creature. They sing, they swing, they dance, they bow, they stand tall. They celebrate solitude and relationship and community, nature and art.



Critical Praise for Earthwalking:


"Thank you for your most amazing and beautiful poem, "Earthwalking." Thank you for receiving and writing it, and for sending it to me. The gift of receiving words for my own half-conscious experience...Your book of poems is absolutely exquisite, a joy to read, a pleasure for the soul and the senses. I cannot thank you enough for sending it to me. I have enjoyed sending it among my friends, and they thank you, too.



--Joanna Macy,, author of World as Lover, World as Self



"Thanks so much for Earthwalking. I love the poems and their spirits. The work is an inspiration to me"



--Shaun Mcniff, author of Earth Angels


"Now I begin to make music again on the skin of the drum,

with my palms, with my fingertips,

the rhythm shivering back through me,

the beat entering

& reverberating

back up through the earth.


I walk with my fingers,

I walk with my feet.

I walk to earth's heartbeat."

Karen Ethelsdattar's poems celebrate the ordinary and recognize in it the extraordinary. They make us glad to be alive.



This is a book of gratitude for the simple things of life: a flowered summer blouse, an avocado plant rooted in water by her son, a bee and the seasons and the rain.



This is a book of reverence for life: the earth itself, a spider and its torn web, her treasured cats, her twin sister who died at 34, a daughter, a son, grandchildren, a mother and father in their last years, friend and lover.



This is a book of appreciations: for Georgia O'Keeffe and Hokusai, for one friend's painting of tomatoes and another's photographs of "the ten thousand things," for a Mexican flamenco dancer and Indian temple sculptures.



These poems play with form and range in mood from the contemplative to the passionate. They will touch you where you live.

"I walk with my fingers,

I walk with my feet.

I walk to earth's heartbeat.


Again & again

I am a woman walking,

walking to where she turns into the earth."