Dawn Chorus

Here is a little peek at a poem, just for you, Children and Nature Network. I don't use this blog much anymore, in favor of greener pastures. 

In a world that feels gridded and graded,

tagged with UPC bars and hashtags and cracked

through windshields and LCD screens,

We get to feeling caged and we tend to want to roar.

Something

fragments, specializes, commodifies, alienates.

So, hey, I remember.

i decry and i shed and i strip away these chains and let this box dissolve

to what is

without

w a l l s

integrate, rather than separate.

I retreat to my sit spots and listen to bird language I don't understand I

sink bare feet into soft leaf littered deciduous peace

stack stones or move earth

get rained-upon, get mud-caked.

I don't hide the young deer teeth in my backpack from my students

I geek freely about plants and mammals before Uniqua and Aaliyah and Kira and Linnae and Bethany.

Our young women deserve to feel invited to feel at home on a planet.

Right?

to take up space alongside and among and as wilderness.

I try not to be shy about this belonging I feel among creation.

Re-membering myself in this context

A small but strong part

of a great being

with redbuds for eyelashes

bloodroot for blood vessels

great white cliffs against lapping laughing seas for fingernails

vast expanses of dunes for elbows

ranges of mountain for paws

the glittering and ceaseless sea for scales.

keep zooming out we're these bits of these constellational megafauna lumbering
playfully and patiently through the space and time.

 

Special Shouts out of gratitude to KRS-1, Cecilia Llompart, and Hurray For the Riff Raff for my current inspiration these days. I wrote this and THEN re-read some old Wendell Berry and they say the same thing.