I see myself a baby bird, tucked inside a nest. A nest of feathers and twigs and things, a womb of human rest. Buried deep inside the fluff, the fortress of this world, there is a spirit, young, tender, living this life as a girl. She has wide eyes and sees the earth through lenses made of mirrors. She finds herself in skeletal leaves and raindrops fall like tears. The moon who smiles down on her is reflected back midnight; the bunny stops to smell the air, and munches with delight. Tendrils of soft and silky leaves grow high up toward the sky; the wooden shutters are old trees that breathe and rest and sigh.
Everything around us has been created from this mother; but nothing that is made is for us to use as plunder. Even when we humans think that something’s made for us, it’s part of something grander, of earning, learning trust. The families we inherit for this lifetime or for longer, are part of something wiser, lightning’s relationship to thunder. We live in symbiosis, or are supposed to be, yet parasitic relation tempts our minds as they cling. Holding tight to water, land, sunshine, metal, wood; clutching everything that we can, justified “for the greater good.”
But as we scratch up this living being, we take more than we give. How does it feel to steal from mothers who gave us all to live?
I am the wide-eyed young one who came to live this all again. Last time I was dancing here, I forgot how it did begin. Wanting to be born with eyes as fresh as morning dew, I came into this earth this time to play, and dream, and stew.
Wandering through my mind and tracking footsteps in the dirt; I find I play with letters, sounds, movement, bodies, earth. A child in a sandbox discovers secrets for the first time.
The hidden treasures of this planet want freedom so they can shine. Existing in this world like a young one, tender, open, is hard for many reasons, and so I’ve built my barriers hoping, hoping that I can walk through this world and keep my smile, hoping that the weight of human suffering touches my inner child. To exist in a nutshell of smiles, love and joy, is also to ignore the hurt that we employ. The reality of humans who create wars, and wound, and rape, is part of the legacy of how we’ve evolved from apes, our wise and wrinkled foremothers who guided us to speak, who taught us how to hunt, protect, use our hands and feet.
One cannot exist beyond this plane and ignore what is around; but holding tight to hope, in an open fist, is something quite profound. Open up my youthful eyes and learn human history, and still envision hard and fast a better reality. One where we can stand together, sit in circle round the fire. Sing the songs of different lands, raise our voices even higher.
Sit across our differences, and learn to listen, rather than prove. See ourselves in one another, the same ancestors to our human brood.
The more I learn of what’s cast as Other, the more I see what’s shared, and yet we each have different stories, different plights for each to bear. Move the body, one step two, rattle bones inside the wind, I learn to dance and quake and move, not to break but to bend. Resilience is the path forward, commitment to something true. Blowing pollen into dreams, fertilizing me and you.
