I am speaking with you.
We are talking together,
speaking of ordinary things,
using ordinary words.
It is good talk too.
The everyday is as much at
risk as the light of the sky
and as angels, robed in
feathers, of heaven.
On that note, I
wish to speak with you
in soul-talk, to
talk in my native tongue, to
watch the changes
come into your eyes, see
how much we are yet
kindred and how seriously we are lost and
how pitifully and profoundly longing
we are broken – with how much
we have forgotten
with how little we dare
remember from the raw,
pre-dawn adventure of
being alive
of being human.
When I talk in this manner I
am truly at home, deep
in my garden, my
orchard, my wilderness without borders
and my wild.
When salmon in the eclipse of summer
swim upstream,
the journey is fate and
fate is arduous. Whether there is
comfort or not, I
do not know. I know that
the work is strenuous and
necessary. I,
in the language of Earth dreaming,
am fish and stream
and the strength and beauty of swimming.
When the white owl wings
silently across the fields of
freshly fallen snow, when
my soul is attuned to creation,
I am one with flight and all – the
owl, the silence, the light-milk-moon
blessing the frosted night of
prayers and dancing.
When I talk like this, my friend
I may well forget my
name and who I am and
feel myself arced and
shining as a rainbow over
lush green island mountains,
over the blue mirroring ocean.
I may find
comfort in the childhood of
spring grass, the soft, waking up smell
of rain on summer earth, my
joy in the breeze of autumn leaves.
And if you hear me, feel
me in your poetic hearing, there
lives a chance for us, something vibrant
between us to hope together, yet,
on the hurt Earth,
the hurt and welcoming Earth.
In our agony, in our hurt.
David Sparenberg is the author of CONFRONTING the CRISIS: Essays & Meditations on Eco Spirituality, in the new EARTH SPIRIT Series from Moon Books, UK. He is a teacher of existential ecosophy and Eco-poet who lives in the Pacific NW of the United States.
