Welcome to the Emergence Magazine podcast.

I'm Emmanuel Vaughn Lee,

host of this show recorded on the unseated lands of the Coast Mewak peoples in present-day Marin County.

In each episode, we explore the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality,

with the world's leading ecological thinkers, writers, poets, and spirituality, with the world's leading ecological thinkers, writers,

poets, and storytellers, through in-depth conversations, author-narrated essays, poetry,

and nature connection practices.

This week, we're featuring two seasons-themed stories,

500 words, an essay by the novelist Marie Matsuki-Mockett,

and an excerpt from 32 words for Field,

a book by the Irish author Mankan Meghan.

Although drawing on traditions half a world apart,

both explore the entwinement of language and land,

and how certain words can act as a bridge of sorts,

softening the sense of duality between our interior world and Earth.

In 500 words, Marie frames haiku as a form of ecological literature,

showing how it traditionally draws on a Sajiki,

a compendium of seasonal words called Kiko

that allow poets to express human feelings through the natural world.

Words like shining wind, summer moon, mackerel clouds.

As the distinctions between the seasons in Japan, and indeed globally, are collapsing,

Marie explores what may happen to this piece of culture,

...