At this time of the rolling year, I usually post a solstice poem - or something seasonal. I wrote the poem below a few days ago when the snow was still on the ground. We've had at least three significant snows this year, after years of "unseasonably" warm winters. Unfortunately, the unseasonable-ness has become the norm.
The reason I bring this up is because I've been witness to and have been experiencing something that now pervades the culture, the world - what has been termed "eco-grief." That all-pervading anxiety and sorrow at the back of the mind, dwelling in the heart; the knowledge that things have gone too far, that we are now living (for those of us that are older) on a different planet from the one on which we were born. It is overwhelming - too big for the small human brain to take in - and it can lead to numbness, dissociation, and mental paralysis.
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I say all this with the knowledge that I'm not a particularly courageous person. My courageous moments have happened because I was in community with other people who shared the same energy: a communal spirit.
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There is also a reference to "shadow people" that are seen by those who suffer from schizophrenia...the figures, for the most part, when drawn, usually look the same...
Winter Solstice: Mercy
What's been lost follows me up
the
mountain. A lone crow
somewhere on the trail ahead. His
voice, all
gravel and rags.
A slight ripple across the reflection
of a piñon branch in a
sandstone pool. The same vibration
that moves
through
the hollows inside my chest (looking
for a way out, finding
none). I long for sleep, the right
dream.
Human sleep and
juniper roots, twins in the same dark
amniotic
sac, knowing
the other is near, so close - What is
this shape? Is it part
of me? Shadows
form at twilight
among bare trees,
the same
shapes drawn by those who suffer
from schizophrenia
- this,
they look like this:
a head, shoulders,
great-coat, dissolution
at
the feet…a Pygmy Owl turns its head,
scans the
ground. Near home,
I see a man beneath the streetlight
that never
shuts off
(the one I call Our
Lady of Perpetual
On-Ness), arms spread,
looking up. Begging for mercy. When
I'm close,
he dissolves up into
the light, a weave of bare branches
against the
first few stars.
Where transformation resides.
This poem has great beauty and great resonance for me - as I'm sure it will for many others. Thanks, Christien.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words. Hope you're well.
ReplyDelete