The Land Remembers

google image - thebackpacker.com

Across these waving grassy fields,

once soldiers fought and died.

The land is steeped

in the blood of young men and horses,

and the land remembers.

In the sea cave,

there lurks a feeling dark and dank.

Once a bloody battle 

was fought along this shore,

and warriors crawled 

into the cave to die.

The land remembers.

Across this round blue planet,

is there an inch of earth

unstained by human blood,

untouched by the clamor

and clash of human war?

It is entirely possible

that Mother Earth herself

has post traumatic stress.

Her lightning storms and hurricanes,

her tidal waves and tornadoes,

may be her way of telling us

she needs to be appeased.

Sit on a rock and hum to her.

Sprinkle a little love potion her way.

Send her your love and gratitude -

and she will remember.

Kids, I wrote this before Global PTSD, written on the same theme, and am posting it here as an offering, given I am struggling with exhaustion these days and barely keeping up. Long day today, but I have tomorrow off, and am looking forward to it with tenacity!

Mother Earth

Mother Earth

by Caitlin Taylor

2008

Mother Earth,
you are so giving.
Though chainsaws 
and grappleyarders
massacre your hillsides,
still trees unfurl their leaves,
and buds bestow the beauty 
of their blooming.

Though factories pump 
offal into the air
and all along your shores,
you lavish us, even so,
with streams and rivers, 
waterfalls and lakes,
and your everness of waves pound
as surely onto the coastline
as if nothing has changed
in a million years.

Though fracking cleaves your innards,
and they're messing
with your very atmosphere,
still your big old smiling sun
comes yawning up behind the mountains
every morning,
and a blue sky unfurls the gift
of a brand new day.

How do you stay so beautiful,
when angry little pustules of war 
are breaking out all over the planet,
bombs exploding, the madness 
of nuclear "testing" shaking 
your very foundation?

And still you smile on us
your beautiful Earth Mother smile.
You array a visual feast for us
in every corner of the landscape.
You color your mountains,
decorate them with clouds,
drape misty shawls
along their shoulders.
You people the planet
with beautiful fur beings,
creatures that fly and swim,
to delight our eyes and
warm our hearts,
to help us strive.
You give us sunset,
night after night,
so we can dream. 

Forgive us for being
acting-out adolescents,
not yet wise enough to understand
the largesse of your offering.

May we grow up fast,
so we can be 
good sons and daughters
to you,
care for you as tenderly
as you deserve.

Mother Earth,
how do you remain
so patient?

Wolf Howls and Warrior Hearts

source

You have faded

from sight

and from sound.

But your wolf howl

has come

to live

in my heart.

A warrior woman

is stirring there.

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong

in the world.

She has

some wisdom

to impart.

Speak.

Speak,

for

Mother Earth

is dying.

Speak,

for all the whales

are crying.

Speak

for the ravaged hillsides

which can

no longer

grow.

Speak

to save

the earth.

It is

the only

world

we know.

One from 2016, to be shared with the Poetry Pantry at Poets United.

This Living Planet

Sproat Lake in February ~Lori Kerr photo

[Tonight a haze has covered half of the province, from the forest fires burning in Lillooet. Sunset will be a red fiery orb again, seen through the sm0ky haze. Everywhere, creatures are panting in the heat. Astoundingly, in this same province, trees are still coming down, as fast as mechanically possible, the lungs of our planet rolling out in logging trucks. The tundra is melting, the ocean is hotting up, glaciers are crashing into the sea. The Talking Heads may order a few new "studies" about What To Do; that should buy some more time. Argh.]


Mother Earth,
I hear what you're trying
to tell us.
So quietly, and with a mother's pain,
you watch as we make our foolish choices,
knowing we will do what we will do
until we come to a place of knowing
and begin to understand
the dream you wish
that we already
knew.

We take from you endlessly,
like human children from a human mother,
only rarely acknowledging
the precious gifts you give,
that we treat so heedlessly.
And what do we give back?
Your bare hillsides
weeping giant tears,
as we render plain
the proud beauty you once knew.
What is left is honesty and pain
and scars from the lances
with which we pierced you
through.

Under the crest of a wave
just breaking
a whale is diving deep, deep.
It is chasing memories of freedom
and its dive is wild and joyous
even while its soul is
aching.

The eagle's eyes pierce us through
with half-remembered truths
that we once knew;
from our half-sleep
of half-knowing
what is true,
we need only open
our weary eyes
to waken.
Mother,
the biggest truths
are always the simple ones:
we are one family
and this living planet
is our home.
I feel your pain
as you watch your children
stumbling
carelessly scattering
gifts so rare
that we wont share.
On the wind,
I hear you breathe
a mother's prayer.
It, too, is simple. Just
"Take care. Take care."

Prayer for Mother Earth

photo by NASA

From El Nino to La Nina,
with floods, tornadoes,
wind and weirder weather,
Mother Earth has been
indicating to us
her grave displeasure.

Our hearts beat in sympathy
with her,
share her dis-ease.
We seem to know that
we have lost our way,
but how do we
find the words to say,
the prayers to pray,
that will
unseat a dynasty
of such greed
and hungry power?

Shift
shift
the collective consciousness
to a more peaceful paradigm:
there is still time
to join together
all our human hearts
- the only place where
peace can truly flower.

BLOCKADE

[In August of 1993, environmentalists in Clayoquot Sound launched B.C.'s largest  peaceful incidence of civil disobedience, in protest of the multinationals' clearcutting the pristine old growth of the Sound. All that summer, dawn after dawn, larger and larger numbers of people gathered at the Kennedy Lake bridge to block the road and stop the logging trucks. A Peace Camp was set up nearby, and people came from all over the world to join the movement. Bobby Kennedy came, so did Paul Watson of Greenpeace. The Greenpeace boat was in our harbour, very exciting! By the end of the protest, over nine hundred people had been arrested for standing on the road for the trees. Some spent time in jail, went back to stand on the road and were jailed again.

The multinationals, who were destroying the area and laying it waste, served no time.

 I was working two or three part-time jobs, so could not be there as often as I wanted. But I was there some mornings, the most emotional and passionate mornings of my life, united in standing on the road for the trees....for the planet!

I was there the morning of the Women's Blockade, when we spiral danced on the road. That night my conservative son called me: "Mom, I saw you on the news, dancing around the road with a bunch of hippies." Hee hee. My kids never know what to expect of this wild mother of theirs. Keeps it interesting!

It is now many years later. The trees are still coming down. Here is the poem I wrote the morning after the Women's Blockade: I can still remember the pride, the joy, the POWER we felt that morning, as the men formed a circle respectfully off to the side and accompanied us with drums.]

August 1993 - Clayoquot Sound

Grandmother,

I can feel you near me

as I dance and sing

with this group of women

on the road.

We mourn man's treatment
of the earth

as, at the same time,
we celebrate

our power.

We have a voice

and we will use it.

Our drumbeat is
the heartbeat

of the Earth Mother.

After all the untold years

of pain and tears

that held me down

I have risen

as an eagle
seeks higher ground,

no more earth-bound.

I have found my voice

and I will sing with it,

laugh into tomorrow,

feel my strength,
my peacefulness

and my joy,

along with love and pain

for Mother Earth.

Grandmother,

now that I am
a grandmother too,

I can hear you.