I
I forgot the
‘Original Instructions’
until She nudged me
Black Bear
Chloe
Green Shoot
alive or dead
She lives on
like the Evergreens
she evolved
with, climbed
to safety
from those
who would harm.
I picked some
boughs for him
as a gift
illness intervened
Absence drills
holes in my heart
but I reclaimed your
fragrant branches
reminding myself
that he doesn’t know
your story
The People*
hold you Sacred
Evergreens
and I do too.
because you
taught me
it was true.
Oh, Trees of Life
I remember the Tewa
Dancing prayers
fringed
needled branches
held tightly
chasing dark spirits
back to Mountains
Shadows all
Even in the Desert
Cedar poles
stand at the center
of your Ancient Kivas.
You speak
in Heart tongues
Choose
Compassion
Community
Compromise
Self- Govern
Equality
Maintain healthy distance
from poisoned peoples –
You save Seeds,
and those you Love.
Pass on Stories
already Present
in Earth’s Memory
You offer genuine
hope for survival
for All
but no one is
listening to
your ways
your prayers
for Life.
You never take
more than you
need, listen to
weasel and otter
deer and turkey
all manner of bears
Familiars all
Roots and Trees
Plants Mushrooms
those you continue
to protect against
all odds
You sing to
the Underground
Web, Spiral Galaxies
spin Light
overhead.
Resilience,
Patience,
Believing.
When
dawn burns a hole
through delusion
Evergreen
boats carved
from hollowed trees
from hallowed trees
guided by
Ancestral Tree Beings
will beach you on
lush green shores.
‘In Beauty may you
walk
In Beauty may you
Walk.’ **
*All Indigenous peoples of this country call themselves the (first) People
**(The last sentence is part of the Navajo Night Chant enacted at this time of year)
I wrote this poem in Honor of Evergreens (and by extension all trees) and for the Native Peoples of this land. When I began, I didn’t know I would be also writing a story of hope.
Most tribal nations describe themselves as the ‘First People” of this continent, which of course they were and are. When colonists first came to conquer, they cut down the Old Ones, evergreens, and shot the animals. They raped the women and murdered whole villages using disease and guns to manifest their goals. When the violent oppressors stole Indigenous land, the People were driven from their homes and stuffed onto reservations where they were left to starve. For five hundred years Indigenous persecution has dominated the lives of these people who continue to persevere despite being made invisible by their American oppressors. Genocide lives on. Accustomed to suffering the People continue to create Community, live the Great Round, hold close their songs dances and Ceremonies, pass on the Stories that their Elders tell about a time when the People will be finally free from tyranny…Each tribe has different variations but at the core of each story is that Change is Coming, and that the People will live on.
The Time of Change that they speak of is upon us now.
As Nature demonstrates, western culture with its lust for economic wealth and power has brought us all to edge of catastrophe, one that includes the death of non – human species, intolerable human suffering across the globe and the destruction of the earth as we know it.
Living through the sixth extinction is not easy. Sorrow runs deep. I center my winter ceremony around the Tree of Life, of which there are many…. I honor all trees but especially during the winter I lean into the evergreens as some Indigenous peoples do, tipping boughs, and making a wreath to celebrate the Tree of Life and to participate in the Great Round. This year during the week of the solstice I created the shape of a ‘tree of life’ around my medicine wheel one evening that I didn’t even realize I’d done until the next morning. I never know where I am headed when I start to craft each year’s story which occurs in the same room but has a different focus each year. Nature’s artist takes over.
II
This year while submerged in this process of creating my winter story I remembered…
When the vision occurred that frigid winter solstice dawning in 2019, I was traversing the Bosque (a wetland) in Abiquiu NM. I had slipped into a light trance as I walked with my hands tucked into my pockets around the junipers, cottonwoods, thorny olives in a repetitive circle. The geese and cranes were wheeling overhead, welcoming in the dawn. The sound of the river in the background was a soothing murmur.
Suddenly I stopped. I was looking down at my cupped hands, entranced. A perfect miniature marbled earth had appeared there. Inside the clear plastic film, the whole earth was visible and pulsing with light. Lush green trees, fields, plains, mountains, deserts, oceans, and clear waters flowed through the pristine planet. I saw a tiny wooden boat with all manner of creatures streaming out of the vessel all at once. What? An Ark?
Bewildered, I watched butterflies and bees, deer and bear, birds of every conceivable species flooding the sky and the earth, the tree studded hills, fields and forests. Experiencing a fierce love and feeling unbearable joy, no – ecstasy, I kept staring at this vision, awe overcoming all other senses – oh, the earth had become whole. Was that when I noticed that not one human being could be seen anywhere on this beautiful blue green planet, my home? Where were the people? I kept searching. Their absence jarred me… and then the images began fading. No! I wasn’t ready. Waves of grief gripped my heart. But the vision of my earth was gone. Now empty, my cupped palms were red, half – frozen. Hurriedly, I buried my hands in their pockets and walked on in a daze, dazzled, by what I had seen.
A few days previously (can’t remember exact sequence but the story is recorded elsewhere on my blog) I slipped into a room full of people to listen to an Indigenous Elder speak about what was happening on earth. In this presentation the woman sternly cautioned the predominantly white audience. “Unless we reverse the trajectory we are on immediately, humans are at risk for extinction too”. As her leaden words sunk into my pelvis, I felt she had spoken the truth. Then staring directly at me (I was sitting in the middle – why had she chosen me?) she pronounced “You will make it to 80” as the hair rose on my arms. Whatever she meant by the strange words remains an enigma.
Westerners are terminally wed to technology, power and greed, war, rational scientific thinking as well to a fantastic hubris, opening the door to massive delusion. We believe we can still conquer nature even as we continue to destroy her. Western culture doesn’t even believe that we need this planet to stay healthy because westerners have no relationship to the earth except as a commodity. As S/he sickens so do we.
Five years have passed since that vision and presentation. What I am witnessing now as this extinction accelerates killing more animals, trees plants and people, I couldn’t even have imagined then…
The extraordinary vision I had of the lush green earth and her animals is still as viscerally present to me today as it was in that moment I spent in the Bosque. So do the questions about the plastic film, the ark, and the missing people that have nagged me for five years. I never doubted the revelation I had been given. Beyond issuing a dire warning I wondered if the Indigenous Elder was including her own people. She didn’t say.
During the last week, I have answered three of the four questions by writing this poem and reenacting my winter solstice ceremony/story and then sharing it with my dearest and most beloved friend, a retired doctor and Animal Healer. When I told him how deeply troubled I was by the plastic film, because to me it seemed as if the planet I had seen couldn’t breathe he astonished me. “Of course, the planet is breathing, it’s full of living beings – animals, trees, and plants!” What about the plastic? Perhaps this was the westerner in me who could see a healed earth but could not yet feel it? Of course! At the time I was doing academic research on Forest scientist Suzanne Simard’s work on trees and the underground mycelial network, but this research was not yet embodied in me as it is now.
The fact that I saw an ark seemed crazy because I am definitely not a Christian, but what if the ark was a symbolic representation of the miracle of life emerging in all its diversity from a singularity that manifested as a boat made of trees? I remember pouring over my grandmother’s needlework of Noah’s Ark because there were a thousand wild animals in that one tapestry, and I loved the part of the story about the animals emerging although the ones I saw in my vision spilled out all at once and all were wild – The slatted high sided wooden boat was somehow similar to the one I learned to row in as a child.
When I puzzled over the loss of humans my Animal Healer asked me if it might not be possible that I didn’t see humans because they hadn’t overtaken the earth, but had survived in small bands as Indigenous peoples are still doing and may be able to continue to do. Oh, I felt such relief because this remark put the last of my doubts about the truth of Indigenous prophecies to rest. I still don’t know about westerners beyond the fact that the patriarchal system must collapse in totality before the air becomes unbreathable, the waters too polluted, but I do think it’s possible for some to survive, if we can develop a relationship with the earth in time to begin to apprentice ourselves to Her before it’s too late.
It’s important to add that the truth of Indigenous prophecies was not part of my belief system at that time, but I knew the stories and had spoken with Native Elders who assured me that they were true. The Original Peoples have such an ancient and intimate relationship with the earth and her creatures, plants and fungi that they have access to embodied knowledge that westerners do not, and it is that knowing that has kept the door open for me on the question of human survival during these last five years.
The last question I had remains unanswered. I have no idea what the woman meant when she made fierce eye contact with me in a room full of strangers and made the remark about reaching eighty.
It must be said that all visions even if they have a collective element as I believe this one does are filtered through a personal lens so the reader may have insights and other interpretations that I do not. Please share your thoughts.
Nature is my religion, or it would be if I could separate myself from Her.
Recall that the root of the word religion means to link back.
Doesn’t this mean that it’s up to every one of us to begin to re-weave the Circle of Life?.