In vast stretches
of the nation's heart--desert--
no poetry
metaphor
song
or
sacrament.
Water, sky, earth and wind
are commodities now.
Bottle, sell, buy, cut, exploit.
For all the houses of worship,
holiness goes homeless.Who rises to face the dawn?
Who pulls off the freeway to
bid the sun adieu?
Who daily dips hands in water...
weeps
at wonders?
Children
are weaned quicklyfrom the language of the leaves,
their eyes turned to tiny screens
of screaming electrons.
The true songs
swirling so near
are lost to their hearing.
The loudest preachers
leech blood and money
from the frightened.
God and our ancestors are
the ultimate commodities,
used when
advantageous,
invoked
but not summoned
for fear of
what their eyes will speak.
In truth,
God has left us to our own devices,knowing
devices
bring no virtue...
only widen the divides
even as they offer the illusion
of communion.
The industrial dragon's hunger
can never be satisfied.It eats its way
toward famine
and then,
only then,
perhaps...
My silver husky, Sofie, knows the songs.
She heard them in her mother's womb,handed down by the old dog spirits
who learned them
from wolves, fires,
tall trees,
thawing meadows
and men still as ice.
She sings, rumbles, warbles, wails and whispers
the shamans' secret tongue.
I will rise with her to face the dawn
and take my mantra from the morning wind.
I will lay with her under the jacaranda
and howl
at the setting sun,
hoping
that when the new moon rises
Americans
will also
rise anew.
