The Lost Art of Listening to the Land

In Yellowstone Park, by Frans de Waal

White Buffalo Woman holds a sacred white calf

in her arms.

See their tears flowing, mingling,

with red blood and rain from Mother Earth,

cascading down the mountain slopes,

bouncing off cliff faces, that wear

the eyes of the ancestors,

stoic, resigned to our unceasing folly,

our refusal to wake up, to see

what is plainly before us.

Mighty river roaring through the gorge

storms the mountain pass,

trees waving their arms in distress,

Mother Wind battering the earth

with pounding rain,

a furious housecleaning,

trying to rid herself of parasites and vermin

clinging to her skin.

There is a thin keening in the wildwoods,

cries of the young and their dams,

all hungry and ever in search of a home

away from the Two-Leggeds

who stalk them to the end of their lives, 

walking ghosts with no eyes

and small, unawakened hearts.

Every inch of this earth is alive, and beautiful.

Every inch of this earth is alive, and suffering.

The pale ones wander the earth

in search of their vanished spirits.

Who will call their souls back into their bodies?

The blood of the fallen trees is on the land,

which is grieving bitterly.

The stones that receive their blood

hold strong healing for ones who know they are ill.

Hold one in your hand.

Feel, and listen, for the spirit in the stone,

the ancient memory it holds.

It will speak to you

in the language of mountains and rivers,

tell you of long-gone times upon the land,

when buffalo coloured the landscape brown

and then, so bitterly, red,

and then were gone.

The stones, the land, remembers.

Listen, for all this earth has to teach us

about being alive.

This poem was inspired by my wild ride through the mountain passes in storm, this past weekend, the faces I saw in the cliffs, the roaring rivers and waterfalls, and by reading  Tim Lilburn's wonderful Ghost Song while I was at Chris's. The way he writes about the land, and nature, just blows my mind. My poem is in response to all that reading his poem drew forth in me.