turn and look...

What would happen if we let go of the notion of ownership? ... if we found a way to work with instead of work for? ... if we could listen to our spin across the black and open? ... if give were more important than take?

~


Marilou Awiakta

When Earth Becomes an “It”


When the people call Earth “Mother,”
they take with love
and with love give back
so that all may live.

When the people call Earth “it,”
they use her
consume her strength.
Then the people die.

Already the sun is hot
out of season.
Our mother’s breast
is going dry.
She is taking all green
into her heart
and will not turn back
until we call her
by her name.

            Keynote poem, Governors’ Interstate Indian Council,
            Nashville, Tennessee, August 1988



*


William Stafford

Ask Me


Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.


*


Mary Oliver

At Great Pond


At Great Pond
the sun, rising,
scrapes his orange breast
on the thick pines,
and down tumble
a few orange feathers into
the dark water.
On the far shore
a white bird is standing
like a white candle –
or a man, in the distance,
in the clasp of some meditation –
while all around me the lilies
are breaking open again
from the black cave
of the night.
Later, I will consider
what I have seen –
what it could signify –
what words of adoration I might
make of it, and to do this
I will go indoors to my desk –
I will sit in my chair –
I will look back
into the lost morning
in which I am moving, now,
like a swimmer,
so smoothly,
so peacefully,
I am almost the lily –
almost the bird vanishing over the water
on its sleeves of night.


*


Gary Snyder

On Climbing the Sierra Matterhorn
Again After Thirty-one Years


Range after range of mountains
Year after year after year.
I am still in love.

             4.X.40086, On the summit


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