We Will

The leaves are falling in the city of Carbondale
like fiery tears drifting to sleep in beds of grass
and lounging in wet gutters
where only rakes and leaf blowers
will touch them.
The Osage oranges tumble from their perches
like hairy green brains
kissing the ground with a light citrus scent
that clings like perfume to fallen leaves and dying grass.
The sun soars overhead
on a journey that grows shorter each day
its arc drifting south with the birds.
The sky is more earthy
with the golden boughs of autumn
reflected in the orange-red bonfires of dusk.
The organic farmers who brought me
bags of kale, bok choy, and mixed greens
with moist dirt clinging to roots and leaves
are packing up their stands for the last time
until the ground thaws
and the grasses grow green again.
The wheel of the year is turning
like the weathered hand of a grandmother artist
whose circular strokes are repainting the world.
The earth’s magick hums all around me
and trembles through my body
like the last leaf falling
with the first flakes of snow.

Are these things invisible
or have we just forgotten how to see them?

Sharp fluorescents, colder than November wind
shatter my concentration like bullets through a mirror.
Stone and tar smother the soil
while steel-skinned nightmares
burn across the earth’s tar and feathered flesh
like carnivorous cows
sucking the life blood out of our Mother.
And yet for a moment, there’s a comfort in the silence of midnight
walking home through empty parking lots and highways
without cars and trucks and withered people
growling at my every move.
But then one of the carhuman cyborgs
cuts across the blacktop
in the crisp haze of electric light
a fleeting harbinger of tomorrow’s cacophony.

Can an empire that makes the Roman one
look like a pack of playground bullies
ever come to see
a single leaf
spiraling to earth
through the autumn air?
Can her people come to see themselves
in the face of a mountain
the black soil underfoot
the leaning of a tree
rather than a blood-soaked flag
a dusty parchment written by wealthy white men
the gears of a well-oiled money-making military machine?
How can we mourn the fall of twin steel towers
without crying out for the scorched earth
that their girders were planted on?
How can we pray for peace
while we hail fire and radiation and sanctions
on whole nations of children?
How can we hope to eat and breathe and blossom
while we print pieces of paper
that declare our Mother to be our property?

With eyes so prone to leaking
they’ve run dry as the desert sand,
with a heart beaten so bloody
it barely pounds in my chest,
the only mourning left for me
is the howl of the wind
through a six storey concrete parking garage.
Is this it?
Is the tar on our land a death shroud?
Is the concrete a stone-cold mausoleum?
Has the metallic twinkle of a neon twilight
chased the moon from the sky forever?

For a moment the tears return
like winter rain stinging my cheek.
For a moment my heart leaps and burns in my chest
like the Yule fires of my ancestors
holding the light through the longest night
until the winter’s end is in sight.

I fall to my knees in the December freeze
digging for the slightest seed.

Somehow
life will go on.
It will. We will.
Somehow.

We will return the cold metal of guns
back to its home in the bones of the earth.
We will tear down the concrete prison walls
burn dollars and flags and corporate charters
until not one of them is left standing.
We will weave a new tapestry across the world
a rainbow patchwork of all colors, shapes, sizes
an organic web of community centers
holding us together without tying us down.
We will walk, run, ride, fly
into the blossoming flowers of a global forest garden
planted hand in hand with our living Mother.

We will.
Won’t we?

The only answer I hear is a whisper above and below
an autumn wind rustling through golden leaves.
There are no words in this quiet prophecy Ð
only another turn of the wheel of the year
and the hope that when the spring comes
there will still be seeds to sprout.

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