Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Heart Sutra

10/17/2021

"Luna's Care". Photo by Grandpa Scott Palmer.
Used with permission.

Beyond hope and fear
good and bad
low road or high road
curse or blessing
there is this moment
this invitation to arrive
on your knees
in your glory
awake.

The forestlight trembles
the mountains surge and quake
the meadows exhale wildflowers.
For even as you see, you are seen.
As you bless, you are blessed.
As you drink, you are drunk.
Nothing is outside of this.

Even when
we are dis-mantled
bone by bone
cell by cell
taken back
into creation's great belly
there is no where to go.

I once dreamed
we were a winged people
who had forgotten our wings
and then designed a whole world
whose sole purpose
was our re-membering.

Can you see us?
Violet feathers
silver sky
singing on the wind?

- Laura Weaver

Here for Life

8/15/2021

Rafael Jesus Gonzalez at Vandenberg Air Force Base, 1983;
first blockade of MX Missile testing

I am here -
I wear the old-ones' jade -
it's life, they said & precious;
turquoise I've sought to hone my visions;
& coral to cultivate the heart;
mother of pearl for purity.

I have put on what power I could
to tell you there are mountains
where the stones sleep -
hawks nest there
& lichens older than the ice is cold.

The sea is vast & deep
keeping secrets
darker than the rocks are hard.

I am here to tell you
the Earth is made of things
so much themselves
they make the angels kneel.
We walk among them
& they are certain as the rain is wet
& they are fragile as the pine is tall.

We, too, belong to them;
they count upon our singing,
the footfalls of our dance,
our children's shouts, their laughter.

I am here for the unfinished song,
the uncompleted dance,
the healing,
the dreadful fakes of love.
I am here for life
& I will not go away.

- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez

Here for life
Sacramento, CA, 2015;
blockade of mandatory childhood vaccines

Here for life
Stratford Ontario, Canada, 2021;
blockade of experimental mRNA gene therapy

Here for life
Colorado, USA, 2021;
blockade of harmful mask mandates

Here for life and we will not go away
Dublin, Ireland 2018

Another Antipastoral

8/1/2021

Foolish Goat Woman by evesthename@VSCO.co

I want to put down what the mountain has awakened.

My mouthful of grass.
My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.
There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I sink to
my knees tired or not. I now know the ragweed from the goldenrod, and the blinding
beauty of green. Don't you see? I am shedding my skins. I am a paper hive, a wolf-spider,
the creeping ivy, the ache of a birch, a heifer, a doe. I have fallen from my dream
of progress: the clear-cut glass, the potted and balconied tree, the lemon-waxed
wood over a marbled pillar, into my own nocturne. The lullabies I had forgotten.
How could I know what slept inside? What would rend my fantasies to cud and up
from this belly's wet straw-strewn field-
these soundings.

- Vievee Francis

Please bring strange things

3/14/2021

Thunder Woman and the Big Moon
by Sandy Eastoak. Used with permission.

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.

-Ursula K. Le Guin

Heart Sutra

Here for Life

Another Antipastoral

Please bring strange things

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Heart Sutra

Here for Life

Another Antipastoral

Please bring strange things

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