Poem for Change

Right in the middle of the undoing and redoing of my personal/professional transformation, my sister, Cristina Cabeza-Kinney, hosted a radical, beautiful, deeply moving poetry event in synch and synergy with the many 100 Thousand Poets for Change events happening around the world.

She asked me to share a poem…for change…for the now.

I ventured out into the woods (a few times) and dug down deep. This is what came out…this is the voice of my now:
(Click on the image below to see it in video form)

We are the children of the Great Forgetting…

Amnesiac orphans, separated from the clan of life by lies.

 

Lies told and carried through countless generations

Poured from the lips and actions of our mother and fathers

Right into our own tender hearts

 

Lies bundled up by our teachers and heroes

And handed to us like suitcases made of bricks

For us to carry and pass on to our children and theirs

 

False stories about the shameful sin it is to be human

That we are essentially flawed

That it is human nature to conquer and destroy

 

False stories about our dominion over the natural world

That we are intrinsically superior

That it is a human right to colonize and consume

 

Our own sacred memories were buried and twisted

As these lies have been enforced with violence and brutality

At first, overt, as they stole our children

And raped the trust right out of us.

 

And then, generation by generation, this brutality mutating

Into an insidious lust for validation in the slave master’s game…

Tricking us to want what kills us…

To want what kills our children and the very possibility for life to continue.

 

Self-absorbed, lonely, depressed, desperate and hungry…

We have forgotten how to feed life

And how to receive nourishment from life.

 

We have forgotten the simple delicious dance of the Gifting Way…

The way of giving the song of our lives in praise

To the glorious web of existence…

The way of dropping our seeds on the fertile ground

And rejoicing as they sprout and nourish our relatives.

 

My heart longs to put down this burden of forgetting

To rejoin the clan of life and remember the dance.

 

In graceful moments of quietude

When the din of motors and motor-mouths and motor-brains

Gives way to the subtle, beautiful, inexplicable, gentle knowing

Of the voice that still sings deep down in my bones…

 

I begin to remember the magnificent legacy of human existence…

The majesty of our true human nature.

 

I hear the exquisitely intricate languages of original peoples

Steeped in thousands of years of intimacy with the living world

Conversing with stones and weather…trees and ancestors…

Rising in song and prayer and laughter

 

And I whisper…

“I am here…daughter of the Great Mother and Father of all of creation…a relative in the web…long lost sister of the Sacred Hoop of Life.”

 

And I find myself molting the justifications I inherited…

Shedding my ability to go along with the lies anymore.

 

Shedding my tolerance for the violence of

Bulldozers ripping the Earth in the name of progress

Gears grinding, diesel engines pumping toxic fumes

Into the crystalline blue sky.

 

Shedding my willingness to play the game of chasing dollars

To buy sustenance stolen from the belly of our Mother

By the jaws of industry and trucked across her precious body

To save me the trouble of learning my local foodscape.

 

Shedding my patience for so many years spent distracted

By the illusion of our personal achievements

While the survival of our grandchildren hangs precariously

Over the precipice of melting ice caps and privatized water.

 

I find myself longing to just lie down beside the creek and listen

For years and decades and eons

Until I remember how to hear her song.

 

Until it sings through me and my cells remember

What my soul never forgot…

Releasing this notion of separateness

And letting roots grow from my body,

Snaking their way through the cool, moist soil

And sending tendrils of new life reaching up toward the sun

In praise and reverence.

 

I find myself rising with my brothers and sisters

The wayward human prodigal children of existence

Turning back toward LIFE

And begging for remembrance

Ready to heal and learn

And reweave the BeautyWay

On behalf of ALL of Creation

 

And I feel the birds and trees

And insects and creepy crawlies

And the Great Central Sun

And the Earth Mother herself

Celebrating our return

Eager to share their songs with us

And teach the dance of the Gifting Way once again

 

So that we can become the parents

Of the Great Remembering.

 

This is my most recent poem, crafted and shared as part of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change event hosted by Cristina Cabeza-Kinney here in Crestone, CO.

This event was a fundraiser for the “Tell Stories That Heal” anthology Cristina is putting together…stories of our modern day initiations…the experiences that change us, heal us and make us whole again. To contribute to the fund for publishing this rich body of work please visit Awakening the Phoenix 

The intro and outro music for the video is by the righteous earth mama, Alycia Chambers. Visit Meadowlark Music to hear more of her soul shakin’ tunes.

 

If you want to read more offerings like this, be sure to subscribe to my email list in the sidebar of this page…I’ll be sending periodic links to the blog posts I make to keep us all connected. Blessings!