The  Speaking Earth

 

To learn to listen to the speech of other than human beings is a journey into the unknown, at least for most 21stcentury people, myself included.  One luscious spring day I was working in my office, a closed-in screened porch.  The green world was a few feet outside my open windows and I could hear the nesting birds in all their springtime busy-ness.  Birdsong was raucous, the creek tumbled along noisily, swollen by spring rains.  The voices of treetop winds, the waters, birds….the warm beckoning of new spring sunshine.  All of them were calling to me, “Come join us.”   Yet, I sat at my work, telling myself I was closer to the breathing earth than most.  I encouraged myself to be grateful, as I completed one task, then another.  Finally the chorus of voices broke through my habit-worn mental constructs…the to-do list, Freud’s super-ego, the Puritan work-ethic.  I flung myself out doors, bursting forth like all the green-energy arising around me.    Pacing one step at a time, listening, noticing, smelling, touching.  Suddenly I saw the one who had orchestrated such enticements, the one calling me to come sit a while and chat:

 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit       

 

Ideas, siloed like wheat 

that is lifted out of native soil,

away from the microbes 

who make bread into flesh

~ ideas exiled in sterile

towers of thought ~

tethered to the desk,

she writes.

 

All the while 

in pungent 

pine-carpeted forest

amid hickory

poplar

wild cherry

birds sing evensong.

Cicadas are Tibetan monks 

droning intoning. 

Forest’s persistent 

emerald light calls out 

an invitation. 

She accepts.

 

Eyes flooded 

with rippling green

orienting by touch

a thrill raises 

tiny hairs on her 

bare arms.

There stands 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit,

a head taller than  

humble moss and creepers.

 

She listens to 

his wild sermon:

“We are God’s thoughts:  

we travel through 

chemical collaborations

enzymes

proteins

sugars.

We are the sustainers

cycling 

           enfolding

harnessing nourishment

offering the forest’s bread: 

   oyster mushroom 

   poplar’s tulip

   wine berry

   paw-paw

   hazelnut

We are holy ideas-in-motion.”

 

Now indoors 

vital thought forces 

come surging from her pen.

Like lightning

they catalyze spirit,

pump life-blood 

into concepts

too long preserved

in the salt of separation.

 

They bring new words

to roam across the page 

like migratory herds. 

Or are they starlings 

flying in perfect unison

to sing the mind awake?