A story or wild prayers for beings of the future

Dear Mother many years from now,

When you sit down and gather 

your curious child onto your lap, 

to read to her about the time we are in now,

I pray the story goes something like this . . .

***

It was getting quite late and dark,

nearing the point of no return. 

Little flickers of terror were lapping at the heels of the mothers;

of the people,

of the bears,

of the aspen grove.

While the leaves turned radiant hues

of shimmering gold and ruby red,

and the days stayed a bit warmer than Octobers past,

the mother’s set about their usual preparations;

carving and baking pumpkins,

eating endless berries and roots,

shutting off photosynthesis.

The suffering was enormous,

and also easy to ignore for many,

insulated by privilege and place.

People had good evidence of the collapsing

of many of the planet’s ecosystems,

and they also spent a great deal of time

selecting the new paint color for their kitchen remodel.

The Greenland ice sheet was melting at an unprecedented rate

and hurricanes were hitting the land

with a newfound frequency and intensity.

Still, humans wrung their hand over their child’s grade in math class.

There was a stillness in the air that Fall, 

as the cold danced around the edges,

but couldn’t quite fully take hold.

The migrating birds hung around longer than usual.

It was almost as if everyone was lingering

at the last bar-b-que of summer just a bit too long,

hoping that they could somehow make it last. 

The Others;

the trees,

the animals,

the rocks and plants,

they knew this:

That their beloved, child-like, human friends, 

who had such incredible power and potential,

but hidden and underdeveloped sensing,

might actually sleep through the fire they had started.

The Others thought,

“We can’t leave this to them anymore,

wait for them to see. 

We have to wake them up.”

And so,

The tree branches began reaching,

at the women going on their usual walks, 

grabbing them by their hair,

stopping them in their tracks.

The deer crept out of the forests 

and into the well-kept yards of green grass,

bringing their keen ears and their secrets.

The oarfish, to some a symbol of doom, 

began washing up on the shores of the beaches.

The trees drank up more and more carbon dioxide,

increasing their biomass and holding their ground. 

The mushrooms and the plant medicines

wrapped their mycelium and their tendrils

around humans and their ailing bodies,

proclaiming possibilities of interconnected healing.

The birds. Everyone was already watching the birds.

The corvids kept scatter hoarding their seeds,

replanting forests on treeless land and at the same time, cawing,

“Look out!!”

“Watch!” 

“Pay attention!”

The ground began trembling, almost imperceptibly,

as the pressure bubbling beneath the mountains mounted.

The oceans warmed and the water expanded,

pushing its way into cities, washing away structures and old certainties. 

The fear started to push through the human’s skin,

like prickles on cactus.

What had been so easily ignored for many years,

woke them up at night, in anxious sweats.

As they sat up, rubbed the sleep from their lids, and 

started to see clearly what harm had been done,

they wept,

and wept,

and wept.

Their tears washed the fog from their gaze. 

It didn’t happen overnight,

but a change started to spread, sort of like the Coronavirus,

one person’s animate reverence bumping into three more and infecting them, 

the circles of impact, ever-widening.

Many humans stopped greedily wanting EVERYTHING.

They stopped running wildly;  

flying and flinging themselves all over the world, 

and sat reverently with the sun setting right here.

They lost interest in all they could manufacture

and began reusing their already enormous piles of things.

They saw the consumerist plunder they had pursued,

was not diamonds at all, but only a lump of coal in their weary hands.

Small actions in great numbers, had a cascading effect.

They planted trees, rewilded the land,

grew simple and plentiful gardens in their backyards,

and protected the Others as if life depended on it. 

And then,

a path that seemed to be a one-way road into complete collapse,

turned like the most committed racehorse

flinging itself full force around a barrel,

shifting abruptly the course of the planet towards

an

Abundant

Interdependent

Reciprocal

Sphere of Life.

***

Dear Mother Many Years from Now,

I pray that as you finish telling the story

and you notice your daughter’s eyes closing,

you lay her beside you, 

and fall peacefully into a nightworld of deep time.