This Burning Land

 

B.C. Wildlife photo

Pain is the necessary salt

our lives require, to rub off

our rough edges, soften and

open our hearts, join us

to the struggles and striving

of other beings, of the human

and beyond-human realm.

We emerge from its depths
deepened, transformed.
We look at the world
with new eyes,
every creature, tiny or ten feet tall,
going about the daily business
of living.

Mother Earth does what she can
to keep us all alive:
she weaves her web
of interconnection,
tries to tell us that
what happens to one happens
to us all.

We are not good at listening,
so we feel the result
of our own actions
in wildfire and flood,
on a heating planet
full of carbon-emitting machines.
We chop down all the trees
that once stored carbon,
and never understand
that we have written our own future
all across
this burning land.