LET EVERYONE BRING THE GIFTS say the Bird Women

 
Let everyone bring the gifts!
The air is full of wings beating,
calling.
Let everyone bring the gifts!
This is the calling, the sound of spring,
the birds singing the plants out
of the ground, the buds
ready to burst,
the color, the immediate saturation of a
sigh
the word ah —again and again—
the sound of the origin,
a beginning,
ah,
Thank the Goddess, angels, Universal
Mother beings, thank the
ancestors, thank the bird people
and the seed people and the sea
people and the wee people.
Thank the forest and the wave and
the clouds and the seals and the mountains.
Thank the trees and the sands and
the chemicals and the stars.
Thank the pens and the inks and the
poets.
Thank the swimming creatures without bones.
Thank the eyes glowing in the dark,
thank the tremors and the volcanoes,
thank the dance classes and the musicians,
who feel the life blood of the spring,
thank the tender Earth, in whose footsteps we
walk, thank the curled and unfurling
ferns, the softnesses of the Earth’s body and
our own bodies.
Thank you cats’ fur, thank you breasts,
thank you sheep, thank you lions thank
you reeds and berries.
Thank you fungi.

The glow we receive we return back
again, again, again.

The birds sing and I remember.

The birds sing and I remember,
and my memories become a song in my body.

The flowers sing and I am reminded
instantly, to exhale, to feel the muscles
deep in my belly, my neck, my throat,
my ears, unclench and re-order,
ready to listen again
for more

xoc
3.18.21

words and image C.Savage 2021

listen to this poem read by the author (on Soundcloud)
LET EVERYONE BRING THE GIFTS say the Bird Women

Casting the Net Wider, and Coming Back Home

 

we are insatiable—
our minds designed to crave,
to seek to hunt to track to
record to remember to find to
experiment
to pass on these traits to our progeny,
to figure out how to share these winding ways as far and wide
as can be imagined
and

we need to both cast the net wider
and come back home

we need to cast the net wider:
“man” has not made it past the moon.
a child born after 1969 does not know the taste
of that thrill
(Mars rovers incorrectly programmed between the archaic
“King’s Own” and
near-globally agreed upon metrics do not hold quite the same j’uj)

we need to cast the net wider:
our possibilities need to be set free,
released from the restrictive confines of
just one way (or the other), from mono-anything,
that we might see hear taste and
rejoice
in the Everything, in the
muchness of everything

we must cast the net wider:
we must begin to believe, once again,
that something new can happen, that
alchemical change can bring forth
something never before seen
in our neck of the universe (or not for a long long time), that
something new can become, out of our selves

and so, like those ascended of every age have tried to impress,
like tired children, like birds, like whales, like herds of
multitudinous ungulates (caribou and deer and such) we must
(don’t you think)
recover, dust off and shine up our inner compasses
and come home.

Return home like a wren to the nest, to where
life comes forth, to where hearth is warm
(or supposed to be), to where
loved ones wait with open faces,
open arms, open hearts, open minds,
just for the chance to light up
in greeting, in sharing story and song and
willingness to collaborate, to
sift through and shift orientation
to home, home, home, like a puzzle piece
turning to be settled and nestled
in place, it cannot be
reshaped by force or complaint, but
by movement, re-orientation, patience,
and time.

and now, now of all nows, it is time to come home.

it is time to come home to ourselves, to the possibilities,
to the potentials not yet uncovered nor turned over,
it is time to reformat old systems of
disparity—between I and other, between mind
and body, between self and world

coming home to ourselves as an act of
closing the gap and sewing it shut, of
leaping chasm and bringing two sides of
something together, forever (or for the mean time)

coming home as a radical act of care for
self and planet and universe and any and all
lands we walk in, home as beam
of light, home as beacon

come home body, come home Earth, come home tree, come home water,
come home wind, come home squirrel and antelope and humpback and hummingbird and snake and crawling thing and winged ones calling from the skies, come home to me rabbit and fox and fur and tooth and dirt and rot and claw and antennae. Come home to me transmission and transformation. Come home, home.

And so, in our capacity to cast the net wider,
let us not forget to catch
ourselves, too.

And in our coming home, let us not forget
the chance to include other.

May we hear and heed the call,
may we become, already, that which
we do not know we seek, but that which we are.

X

 

listen to this poem read by the author on SoundCloud:

Casting the Net Wider and Coming Back Home