Kinfolk

 

Walk into a grove of trees

or sit by a body of water

as the sun is going down.

Can you hear it?

The longing of Mother Earth

for us to live in harmony

with other beings, and the earth herself.

We are kin, she whispers on the wind.

Be an ally, not a conqueror.
What happens to one,
happens to us all.

Do you hear the heartbreak

of the great whales, whose calves

are dying for lack of food

in a warming, polluted sea?

Do you feel, as great winds

blow our houses down, and floods

cover the land, the dis-ease of the earth

growing too hot and tempestuous?

Turn off the toxic rhetoric

meant to distract us from a planet in peril.

Listen to the wild ones, the raging rivers,

the roaring winds, Mother Earth's

warning cries.

May we rediscover kinship

and become the earth's  allies.

Only 73 orcas left in the Salish Sea. Of the last two calves, born this spring, one has died, and other is failing from under-nourishment. And Brave Little Hunter was last seen in July, so she has likely swum on, alone, into the spirit world.