Why the Wild

"To the humble, whose invisible choices are healing the world."

-Dedication at the beginning of The Better World Our Hearts Know is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein

Photo Credit: Jimmy Nelson, beforethey.com

Why the Wild

Daily, I exist in many buildings,

On computers, with the homeless,

Infantile inventions on the cosmic scale

And I go between places

On cracking roads

With cracking resolve.

Sometimes futility

Heartbreak, greed, addiction

Which drown dignity like quicksand

Bombard my blood

And I am infected into conveyance, into a cave

Where alive is assumed.

But the Spark in me

Which, though slighted, always speaks,

Says have you forgotten Why?

There may be no answer

But I know where I must go to ask.

In memory and imagination

And on the most sacred days

I seek what grows.

I abandon steel shadow for sun shine,

Electric for ethereal.

I take steps with the Moved-On,

Who upon leaving learned

Why.

I go places where giants danced,

on Pachamama’s goosebumps.

I ingest the remote revolving of mountain-valley tapestries

Where Her breath sends all cells dancing

Into an embrace, a resurrection,

Until I-Me cease to breathe

And become crying, coexisting, and remembering Why the Wild.

I go to trace that a seed grows

A universe expands

A life endures.

Thus we plant purpose, defy death.

I go to detect the butterfly wing drum

Which I feel like an earthquake in my chest

And together

We topple empires.

I go to reconsider the cosmic constituency,

Weaving webs of you, me, and worms:

Stardust, we’re all made of stardust,

And all those times the tears puttied my face

I was only summoning the supernova remnant in my soul.

Don’t fear the sublime;

the waiting extinction, the cliff drop.

Fear the crippling unCreated ordinary,

The thin extrinsic intonation,

MoreThinkDoYesterdayTomorrowNever

Sing instead the immanent song

Less. Feel. Be. Now.

And if you have forgotten how or what to sing,

Find one tree.