Attack And Receive

Earth under siege:
We notice that the meadows grieve
Each summer that the swallows’ swoop
Is interrupted by the new-felled trees
Missing the myriad glint of insects dancing.
Yet we, inheritors, receive

As if the fruits need poisoned by our touch
And would not grow themselves
-Or by the hand of God if you believe-
Fruition may be freely given:
Climb up a northern hill
And find
The constant blaeberries!

----------------------------

Blue fingered fruits sweet on the tongue...
My easy life
Jumped at me
A long year back

First people of the land , Dakota,
Gathering as they need,
Fight water’s safety
For our whole earth’s balance
Held for untold years
Despite the devastation of the plunder
Of an unthinking younger brother...

Oil slides to soil their rivers now.

I weep my futile tears
As they...they fight my cause
A cause they don’t deserve to have to fight
Or I deserve to win...

A fight
That was never a fight
Back then,
Before this measured time
Simply a way to love to serve in safety.

My childhood sacred text instructs
The guardianship of kings
That cares for
And maintains…

We –with our plastic-toys,
Bombs that kill the earth with the children-
We have lost the way.
I pray
That in these darkening days
The visioned may prevail-
The earth itself deserves your ways.

---------------------------------


Beside the wire the driven fields are stabbed,
A thousand daggers ranked against the soil.
No room for poppies here, or swifts, or voles
To find a shelter in the busy wheat .

An upturned mistle-thrush lies where it lived.

A small child told me solemnly
How caterpillars have no place
“Because I farm and they eat up our food”.
At six ,an eyebrow raised
At thoughts that they might share.

I tramp the barren tracks
The tractors made
And wonder how we turned
The giving earth our slave:
Packed earth admits no green

And yet...
From this assault comes sweetest bread to share,
The joy of porridge at the winter’s table.

My place is fortunate, is laid.
The aching land keeps yielding harvest home.
And so I get
To walk beside the promised peaceful waters.
We build our hope, our gains are set
Against the famine that we might not meet,
Dry places...

We kill, we pray,
We thank what gods we may

And eat.