Songs and Poetry for the Green Burial Movement

Poetry

Poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019) reminds us: 

 

“I’m going to die one day. I know it’s coming for me too.

I’ll be a mountain, I’ll be a stone on the beach. I’ll be nourishment.”

British poet and novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) similarly wrote evocatively on how our human bodies become part of the Earth, a kind of naturalistic immortality:

Transformations

by Thomas Hardy


Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!

Poet Anne Alexander Bingham likewise reminds us:
“It is Enough”:

To know that the atoms
of my body
will remain…
some atoms might become a
bit of fluff on the wing
of a chickadee
to feel the breeze
know the support of air

and some might drift…

– from A Year of Being Here website

 

Bury My Heart

© copyright 2021 Pearl Forster (used by permission)

 
Wild Orchid II by Kaye Forster- copyright-2021 - used by permission
Wild Orchid II by Kaye Forster- copyright-2021

Bury my heart in a breathing forest. 

 
Send me not skyward through a tower of haze
to rain down death from my smoke and ashes.
Let the pulsing forces that once sustained me
send the sap rising to breeze-swaying trees
and sweeten the nectar for birds and bees.
Swathe me in cloth woven from natural fibers
and lay me where I can see
my clear path to heaven forming
and my spirit sings of joy to be free.
Bury my heart in a breathing forest.
Let my love bring the gift of life.
 

 

 
Songs

Songwriter Joyce Rouse (aka “Earth Mama”) observes: “Music is the jet fuel for every important movement!”

 

So here we would like to create a list of “Songs for the Green Burial Movement.” If you have any suggestions for additions, please contact me.

  • Glen Alyn – “Stainless Steel”
    When you bury me, don’t you place my body
    In stainless steel, inside a concrete box.
    Let me touch the earth, cool, moist, sweet Mother,
    Where my bones can spread into the roots of time
  • Ysaye Barnwell – “Breaths” – Poem by Birago Diop; Music by Ysaye Maria Barnwell © 1980 
    Those who have died have never, never left
    The dead are not under the earth
    They are in the rustling trees
    They are in the groaning woods
    They are in the crying grass
    They are in the moaning rocks
    The dead are not under the earth
  • Joe Crookston – “Fall Down as the Rain”  (YouTube)
    When my life is over and I have gone away,
    I’m gonna leave this big ol’ world and the trouble and the pain.
    If I get to Heaven, I will not stay.
    I’ll turn myself around again and fall down as the rain.When I finally reach the ground, I’ll soak into the sod.
    Turn myself around again, come up as goldenrod. …
    “Then when I turn dry and brown, well, I’ll lay me down to rest.
    Turn myself around again, as part of an eagle’s nest.
  • Grateful Dead – “Ripple” from their American Beauty album:
    Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
    If your cup is full may it be again
    Let it be known there is a fountain
    That was not made by the hands of men
  • John Denver – ‘Homegrown Tomatoes”:
    When I die don’t bury me
    In a box in a cold dark cemetery
    Out in the garden would be much better
    ‘Cause I could be pushin’ up a home-grown tomato!
  • Kansas – “Dust in the Wind” – (PS22 performance on YouTube)

    … just a drop of water in an endless sea
    All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
    Dust in the wind
    All we are is dust in the wind
    … Now, don’t hang on, nothing last forever but the earth and sky…

  • Laurie Lewis – “Garden Grow“ (YouTube) from her album One Evening in May.  Live Performance (YouTube)
    I want to go back to this sweet Earth
    When my time comes to go
    Just lay me down beneath that ground
    So I can help this garden grow
    Don’t preserve my empty hull

  • Sarah Pirtle – “My Roots Go Down” (lyrics and background on official website)
    My roots go down, down to the earth./
    … I rise with the voice of every living thing.

  • Sarah Pirtle – “Lay Down Your Weary Burden” (lyrics and background on official website)
    Lay down your weary burden. Open your heart and sing….
    We are the pulse that’s never ceasing…
    We are the strong wings…
    We are the wind that sweeps the greeting.
    We are the salt spray….
    We are the dream that’s never ceasing.
  • John Prine – “Please Don’t Bury Me” – (A humorous song expressing a desire for organ donation – which is perfectly compatible with “green burial”!
Please don’t bury me
Down in that cold, cold ground
No, I’d druther have ’em cut me up
And pass me all around
Throw my brain in a hurricane
And the blind can have my eyes
And the deaf can take both of my ears
If they don’t mind the size
 
  • Malvina Reynolds – “This World” – (YouTube)Oh, this old world is all I know,
    It’s dust to dust when I have to go
    from this world, this world, this world.Somebody else will take my place,
    Some other hands, some other face,
    Some other eyes will look around
    And find the things I’ve never found
    Don’t weep for me when I am gone,
    Just keep this old world rolling on,
    this world, this world, this world.

Words and Music by Malvina Reynolds.
Copyright 1961, Schroder Music Co.

 

See also:
Fitting Tribute Funeral Service Green Burial Playlist
(A Collaborative Spotify Playlist):

For more information about Green Burial movement see:

Earth Songs
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