Earthing by Nadja Lubiw-Hazard

“Earthing” was selected as the winner of the 2026 Priscila Uppal Memorial Award for Poetry. To read the judges’ comments on this poem, click here. And as a further testament to the excellence of this poem, “Earthing” was also given Honorable Mention in the 2026 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest over at The New Quarterly and is forthcoming in their Fall 2026 issue! Check out their contest results here and keep an eye out for their next issue.

Earthing

Consult the frilled sea-green lichen
mapped on the grey boulder,
the sharp-toothed opossum skull
in the oak leaf litter,
the split mossycup acorn,
her sapling reaching sunward
through the eye socket.

Attune yourself
to death.

Stand beside the salmon-run river,
the burnt sumac leaves hanging down
like row upon row of prayer flags,
the wind speaking -
fluttering the dying leaves of the cottonwood,
like rain pattering down.

Your mother has left,
will become bone, soil, sapling.

Attune yourself
to life.

Lift your face skyward for the blessing.

---

Nadja Lubiw-Hazard is the author of the short story collection, The Life of a Creature, the novel, The Nap-Away Motel, and the children's chapter book Tizzy and Me: Fifteen Ways to Love a Mink.  Prior to turning to full-time writing, Nadja worked as a veterinarian, most recently at the Toronto Humane Society.  As a life-long animal-lover and long-time advocate for them, her writing often explores themes related to the more-than-human world. Nadja facilitates therapeutic writing workshops with The Collaborative Learning College at CAMH related to pet-loss grief, eco-grief, and the grief of mental illness. She lives with her wife, and a feisty, fluffy cat in Toronto. Find out more at www.nmlhazard.com