Writing by Elena Gustafson

Epiphany 1: A Veneer on Infirmity: On Death and Water in the West
Epiphany 2: The Enemies of Public Lands
Epiphany 4: Change is on the Wing

Other Writing:
» Ode to a Purposeful Life 10/7
» Desert Secrets
» Death and Silhouettes
» I Hear Footsteps on the Rock
» The Things I Carry
» Learning from Lizards poem version prose version
» Nature Writing 2058





Epiphany 1: A Veneer on Infirmity: On Death and Water in the West

At Owen’s Lake, my footsteps cause cracks to form. As I walk, crunching my way across the dry, alkaline soil, bubblers softly pour out water nearby to flood the areas between man-made roads and burms. Cracks abound across the arid West. Lineaments are painted on sun-licked granite. Riverbeds cut through valley floors. Through these cracks water pools, freezes, thaws, using the fractures as connecting highways in its cycle through the earth. But not here. Here, water has been taken out of the cycle, and the cracks should not be.

Finally I stood motionless, stilled by the deafening sounds of my movement across the desiccated ground, and I thought of my grandpa Mardy. When he was dying from Alzheimer’s, it was as though he turned into a desert. Through a long, ten year decline, sickness crept in as his personality flowed out. I imagined his brain shriveling from plaque and cracks forming like drying dirt, letting memories fall out and into oblivion.

Like a patient with a long disease, Owens Lake was slowly drained by the city of Los Angeles until a second aqueduct in 1970 also started sucking the valley dry from deep aquifer veins. Soon, the symptoms of a dying ecosystem became too obvious to ignore—springs had dried up, migrating birds no longer stopped in their travels, and dust storms laden with toxic chemicals from the dried lake bed made the whole valley sick. Litigation against the merciful city of angels started for violations of environmental quality laws, water contracts, and issues of human health. Voices from Owens Valley came together like water molecules, until enough cohesion moved politics through the courts and LA no longer profited from denying their wrong doing and delaying mitigation.

Mike Prather, the head of Owens Valley Committee, a main force in returning water to the valley, took our group of travelers out onto the irrigated lake-bed on a hot September day, the kind that smells yellow and sun-baked before you fully wake up. As we stood at the edge of a shallow pool, blood red from algae and swarming with brine flies, he quietly told us that this is an environmental success. “Everything to do with water in the West is artificial,” Mike adds. It seems this false coating on Western water allows us to glaze over this precious liquid, via denial or lack of awareness. Recognition of problems, risks, and connections continues to fall through the cracks in that veneer, and old water problems are rehashed while new ones are created.

At the edge of UM creek in Utah, I stand by old mud laced by pentagon cracks and cow prints. We’re here with Mary O’Brien, a biologist for Grand Canyon Trust, to measure the impact of cattle on this riparian area. Through long days in the field, Mary teaches us how to read the land, pointing out over-grazed grassland and incised streams as we take measurements of browsed riparian willows. These are the kinds of landscapes you would see on postcards, the kind of images I might have venerated as “the West” before starting this semester, the kind of areas I thought of as healthy, not ailing. Paraphrasing Aldo Leopold, Mary says that learning to see ecological connections makes you aware of all the wounds on this land—cracks we’ve carved into bare earth and rocks, cracks we’ve made in ecosystem circles.

I understand the almost paralyzing fear of seeing something as sick and not wanting to face it, especially if it seems there is no cure. In the last few years of his life, I had trouble talking and interacting with my grandpa because I was terrified. The implications of the disease were too much to take, and I distanced myself so I wouldn’t notice the way he was deteriorating. I hoped to keep a better, if dishonest, memory of him, whole and un-cracked, his wrinkled face and smile shining up at me through a rosy lens. Now I realize the opportunities I missed in order to create a clean, falsely coated memory. It is easy to build a defensive wall against infirmity. But this mindset is leading to a huge divide between Western people and the land they live on. The profit from avoidance does not last if we are merely delaying the inevitable.

Traveling across the West this semester, the constant backdrop, besides aridity, was infirm landscapes and communities. My nostalgia is prickly and bittersweet. It’s hard to have memories of the West into which degradation is not woven through poverty-ridden towns, over-grazed public lands, or the destruction of seemingly “uninhabited” places.

And yet, in what is cracked there is still beauty, still passion. We’ve met with people, like Mary and Mike, digging their hands, their energy into possible cures for the fractures and diseases they see in their land and culture, creating a mosaic out of the eroding pieces of the West. These activists have managed to find a balance between shutting down and being overwhelmed by taking a step, however small, away from emotional dishonesty and towards repair. Healing for themselves and others. Healing of themselves and others. Filled with stories of broken lands and the people patching them together, I hope I will remember that inaction from the fear of facing infirmity leads to regrets. At the end of a semester of travel, I wonder if it’s enough to carry with me the bitter tang of Owens Valley dust in my mouth.

Back to top


Epiphany 2: The Enemies of Public Lands

I spent the past few days on the range, and unlike the familiar words of that old cowboy anthem I haven’t seen deer or antelope and I’ve heard plenty of discouraging words. The culture of ranching, while still romanticized and mythic in American culture, is coming under greater contention from economic and environmental points of view. Jon Marvel is an instigator in this issue, using litigation as his main tool to get cattle off public lands.

While showing us scars on the land caused by grazing, Jon says that litigation is useful because it holds people accountable. Through Western Watersheds Project (WWP), Jon is trying to make ranchers and the BLM stick to grazing laws already in place. He hopes this will get fifty percent of ranchers off of public lands because under appropriate environmental regulation the economic burdens will convince ranchers that land buyouts are in their best self-interest.

I don’t disagree with Jon on the damage that cattle cause whether they are being managed well or mismanaged. I disagree with how he uses ranchers as a scapegoat for a larger problem, our cultural overconsumption and overproduction of meat and food. The dedication and accomplishments of WWP under their very focused goal impress me. However, they work with a black and white view—either you want no cattle or you are a rancher enabler. I believe that this method of environmentalism, working only through lawsuits and forcing dualisms, provides a band-aid solution. It focuses on a symptom without looking at the cause--the wicked problem of why ranching still exists even though it consists of a small social group and is ecologically and economically unfeasible. Having a clear opponent to point fingers at gets things done quickly, but it creates a mob mentality—fast and passionate, with lots of carnage left in the wake. Relying on laws and this alienating group approach, rather than mindset change and building solid support, means your movement can be overturned the next day by a new Congress or changing social winds.

As a broad issue, Jon leaves meat consumption for others to take on as he focuses on public lands ranching. While there is power in specific projects, I think that’s only if they produce local sustainability and security, which WWP is not. In the long-term, nothing is going to change ranching on public lands until public meat consumption is modified though incorporation of externalized costs, policy change, and education at a mass level. It is easier to have something specific, like ranchers, to scapegoat, because otherwise we realize that we are all the reason there is degradation on public lands and economic crises for ranching families. Without a tangible enemy, it’s harder to gain support—it takes more work and it takes creativity to find something you are for, rather than the negative vision of what you are against.

Jon believes if our actions destroy the basis on which we live they’re not sustainable. He was referring to cattle’s destruction of land, but I think this is applicable to what he’s doing as well. We are all dependent on the communities we belong to, and working just through litigation and no discussion destroys that basis. For long-term sustainability, litigation should be only one of the tools that activists use while creating a positive vision for the future. There is no way to replace cattle from public lands instantaneously and without large costs, no matter whether meat from public lands comprises 2 or 40 percent of American consumption. And the replacement definitely won’t come without mindset, policy, and economic change on a large community level.

Ultimately, there is a disconnect in our consumer chain between the production and consumption of our beef. So how can we amend public lands ranching and create a true home on the range, one that is economically, ecologically, and socially sustainable? I don’t think it’s with Jon Marvel, because backing groups into a corner does not lead to long-term or productive solutions. I know looking at the big picture is not practical all the time and can throw other goals off track. Outliers like Jon are important for the center to have room to act. But without keeping the whole picture in mind, the focus issues of WWP stay disconnected from the communities on which they depend and the practices they wish to change. I worry their impact could drive a wedge deeper in an already divisive consumer society, and Jon’s vision of public lands as a home for antelope and big-horn will never be realized.

Back to top


Epiphany 4: Change is on the Wing

In Sonora, Mexico, I joined twenty fellow travelers, students, and friends to watch the redwings gather at dusk. The blackbirds were roosting in the old cienega, a wetland now filled with water pulled by a solar-powered pump. Over the cottonwood branches the flock swarmed, thousands of collective wings rustling the leaves as they passed. Swooping up, down, swirling like dust devils, their forms captivate us as they circle, tantalizingly close to the reeds but not landing; not yet.

When we watched the blackbirds move in harmony, it was hard to tell who the leader was. Sometimes they looked scattered, like disconnected dots. On a turn, however, we saw extended wings beating as one, no single bird in the lead. The flock of hundreds twisted and turned together, following helical curves up through the sky; each bird moved independently and yet in unison, somehow never colliding. The nightly roost is a tricky dance for the flock. Dive too early and maybe no birds follow, Dive too late, and you pursue rather than lead, potentially to be stuck at the edge of the group. Either is dangerous, vulnerable to attack by predators in the night.

Across the West it is sometimes hard to see cohesion, except perhaps in the presence of over-grazed public lands, incised streams, and destruction of “uninhabited” places. In a region where the iconic cowboy, lone and independent, rules and where cattle outnumber people, it’s no wonder that the many snippets of towns and landscapes we saw this semester seem separate, disconnected pins stuck into a map of arid lands. The activists we met with all move with different patterns facing markedly different obstructions to overcome in order to get to the new settling ground they imagine. In another riparian area, farther north and two months earlier, our group met with Suzanne Fouty. A woman of inexhaustible energy, Suzanne wants to restore beaver to incised riparian areas of southeastern Oregon to provide for the future conservation of the water tables and the vitality of the land. Suzanne is all about making connections. She realizes that her supervisors in the forest service, the beaver hunters, the water and soil conservation district downstream, the cattleman who graze along the river, and the general public will each have to be appeased to make this change happen quickly and cohesively. Science and personal conversations are her tools for consensus building, to make the scattered interests within her forest district align and dive into restoration work together. In a region where beavers are often still despised as “pests,” the strong flock Suzanne has created is essential for a unified front of movement.

Two weeks later I stared at a dead owl pulled from a cattle stock tank. The man who holds it, Jon Marvel, head of Western Watershed Project, wells up with anger at the irresponsibility of the ranchers. His goal is to conserve land by removing cattle grazing from public land, forcing compliance from ranchers and the BLM one NEPA lawsuit at a time. Litigation and not conversation is his tool to force a turn, because he has seen grazing rules broken too many times to respect ranchers anymore. John has a few willing, and many forced, followers, but he is mostly circling towards his conviction without worrying about the group that may or may not swarm behind him.

In Mexico, I sat as shadows grew in the willows and the reeds, utterly confused by the amalgamation of people and places we’ve seen and how to take conflicting visions and methods of action with me into the future. Close to dusk, groups of redwing blackbirds started to drop. Though it is easy to see birds’ movements as sporadic, small groups still fell to the reeds in harmony. As the flock separates I see that I don’t have to find a way to weave all the people we’ve seen this semester together into one vision. There may be no overall leadership or direction with land conservation, grazing, water issues, or anything else. But each individual and group we met with is courageous because they are taking the first step towards what they believe will be a safe nesting place. They are moving in a direction they see as positive and moral, some slowly, some quickly, hoping that others will follow.

Finally one last bird took a chance and dived, leading the rest of the restless flock down in hushed stillness. Sometimes the most amazing moments happen without us realizing, but still require somebody to move, pulling but not forcing the flowing mass behind them. The raw darkness of the southwestern deserts played with the orange tinted clouds, night starkly pulling the distant hills close. Change happened that night in Mexico. But the next morning, the birds awoke, arose, and scattered, only to repeat the process the following night. Our group continued on through a myriad of economic, political, and ecological problems that passed before our eyes in a blink as we drove along the road. Each day goals are met, shifts happen, and our lives are turned in subtle ways we don’t see until we land at the end. Somewhere, birds called to each other. Somewhere, voices joined in unison to forge a new path. Change is always happening. The birds always come down to roost.

Back to top


Ode to a Purposeful Life 10/7

He loved flowers. Their light and scent drew him in, engulfed him, cradled him. He grew up and lived in a community that respected flowers00they need them to support their livelihood, to put food on the table, to raise their young. But he always felt his need for flowers ran deeper than theirs. He needed flowers like salmon needed to spawn, like water follows gravity down, like the sun rises in the east, like babies gasp for breath—constant, instinctual, but yet deeply more than instinct.

Flowers were a part of his soul. He itched being away from flowers and let his body dance his pain. The others didn’t understand. They retreated from him, and he retreated from them. He continued to work, but spent more and more time out in the field. That’s why, in his old age, no one noticed when he didn’t come back. In early fall he just stayed out the flowers he loved were disappearing for the season, but he was drawn to their stems and umbel skeletons just the same. He lay down, grasped a dry remnant of life, and breathed his last, joining the dry husk of plants to stay with his flowers forever.

No one noticed him as they passed by the dried flower. Brown stem in a brown landscape, its dancer-like structure was easy to overlook. I took a second glance at the gentle curving plant, and that’s when I saw him. Curled around the leading flower stem, legs and jaw clasped tight to suspend his fragile body upside down. At first I thought he was sleeping or hiding, but tentative pokes to the stem provide no response. The bee has died here, soft fuzz, black and white lines, and translucent fairy wings preserved in aridity. Death a testament to life, to flowers, to fragility.

Back to top


Desert Secrets

I find it ironic that the canyonlands
prevalent and iconic across the arid west
have walls composed of oceanic sediment
an old secret in broad daylight
a history and context ignored or unseen
red sandstone
dotted in seashells
rises in contradiction at 8000 feet
as tiny people dot the land
and suck dry the remnants of deep earth arteries.

Back to top


Death and Silhouettes

I like to focus on silhouettes of trees at dusk
and switch the foreground of my vision
from the trees to the darkling sky

holes of light as opposed to branches of dark
become the center of my sight

I taught myself this art of shifting spaces
to find comfort and beauty
from evenings in the high deserts of New Mexico

there, lone skeletons of pinon
had no competition with other trees
as a backdrop for the sky

there, fire-scarred mountains created
elephant-hair pinpricks of trees
behind the burning sun

those from the desert,
I believe,
are more accustomed to dealing with death
both imminent and present
we face sparseness, brown, thirst, dust

a circular non-description, death’s definition comes from dying,
whose definition comes from death
there is no state of mind from which to reflect on this state
becoming used to death is to admit that life cannot exist in all places at once

so to life I give a break
accept the spaces she cannot fill
revel in the precociousness and tenacity
of small affirmations of existence
especially away from meandering lines of green

the spaces in the desert are not dead
so much as they are absent of obvious life

outlines make me aware
of what there actually is
shifting focus finds beauty in brown

Back to top


I Hear Footsteps on the Rocks

I hear footsteps on the rock. Soft movement of bare feet over and through layers of time, welcomed by smooth stone. Fingers trace the work of other’s hands, relishing in simpleness, practicality, beauty. We tell stories through shards and remnants fading with age, and try to see heartstrings that lie in the twists of juniper bark, joys and sorrows running along the cracks in the land, curving back long ago and far away.

In my home town of Los Alamos lies the ruins of an Indian dwelling. It survived on this mesa top through wind and rain, ranchers and east coast boys, the scientific proess and a town built off secrecy. Picked clean to preserve it, cornered off between a new parking lot and old building, it stays forgotten or unnoticed. Growing up, ruins of history from people of this land were partitioned in my mind to their sight spectacular appearance in Frijoles Canyon. Young fingers traced soot across cave ceilings, young legs climbed new ladders to old kivas. Young eyes bright in wonder at stories of coyote told under a starry sky.

Later in life I told tales as a guide for others and tracked night paths across the cliff face, lighting the night for drums and chants to echo and penetrate through the depths of time.

Visitors to these places whisper of a people, of lie lived and art made, remark on the power of what’s left behind. Amazing, we say, that they lived out here. What made them fail, I’ve heard, why did they leave? Where did they go? What stories of use do these remnants hold, what voices were heard here, long ago and far away?

Feet walk over red sandstone, trace a trail through rock yielded to clay through time. They call out over the cliffs, aanii-bouzhou. Anishina’abekwe nd’aan. Voices tell stories, not fading or failing with time, but adapting. Surviving through white man’s deceipt and lost wars, surviving against the guise of history and extinction. Voices asking to perceive what we deface or destroy. Voices welcoming in, ya’ate’eh, teaching wisdom through sun, moon, water, than, p’oe, p’o’e. voices telling trails of love and loss between communities, between men and women, ma chi, kwe’e sen.

We trace unseen paths on the rocks, make stories through small pictures in forgotten shards and stone tools. We learn from long ago and far away, humbleness through starkness and simplicity. But do we hear voices on the wind, stories told in remembered languages by beating hearts? Do we place our value in ancient half-truths or present sentiment?

We trace unseen paths on the rocks, find pictures in forgotten shards and stone tools. We learn from long ago and far away, humbleness through starkness and simplicity. But I’ve also earned to listen to voices on the wind, remembered languages expressing beating hearts. I find sparks in ancient half-truths, where more mysteries appear with each revealing and learn depths in present sentiment and stories that fold layers of time.

Back to top


The Things I Carry

Sandstone, river rock, granite, chert, fragments of igneous intrusions.

I hold a palm-sized piece of rock. A flat plane with welcoming edges and a desert smell—lime, dust, heat, a slight tang at the end. A subtle red smell to match the rock’s hue. On one side of the thin plane, a curve of tan, the color of desert haze, creates a half-circle, a bowl, a moon sliver, an arch. Or perhaps it creates a “c” to represent the slope, Comb Ridge, from which I collected this piece of silica-cemented sandstone. Any way it’s turned, though, the tan discoloration does not matter, because I did not notice that aspect when I picked up the rock and carried it down from the ridge.

I took the stone because I collect pieces of ephemeral nostalgia when I travel. Pressed flowers and leaf skeletons fall from the pages of books, rocks abound in my pockets, and I gather what we kick around under our feet each day. I keep what I believe would otherwise fade, decompose, erode, scatter. I collect what perhaps a million people have touched, or what no one has touched. I try to be conscious of keeping, whether stone or plant, only that on which humans have not left a mark.

I gather and carry these pieces because it provides me with a record. A map, though nontraditional, of where I’ve been. It doesn’t make sense to anyone else, the objects don’t fit on a piece of paper or even together in any logical semblance, and they lay scattered in my room on return from travels.

I’ll also be the first to admit that I take a lot of pictures. My camera hangs from my neck as I descend steep canyon walls to calming, cooling, rivers below. I take pictures to mark where I am for others who care to look, to record by sight so lines marked on a road map have a connection to place. But a picture is not the place. Neither is what I collect.

In every journey there must be a personal connection, a personal gain. An experience that is locked in memory and abstraction, ours alone, even if we want to share it with others. Pictures lay out the journey for those I want to show it to. But to lay out the personal journey for myself I try to be conscious through the gatherings of where I’ve been. By taking pieces of aesthetic insignificance and remnants of life, I remind myself later of…what?

Maybe I gather for all these big ideas and hidden meanings. Or perhaps I collect genetically, because like my grandmother I am simply and not-so-secretly a pack rat, though hopefully with a much more sterile midden than our rodent parallel.

A round remnant of cob, sun-worn sticks, wave-smoothed roots, cholla skeletons.

From a week in the desert, we are attempting to create a deep map of place. This requires awareness, we say, more than just experiencing but a purposeful registering and isolating and focusing. It requires looking at common things in new light, brushing away cliché. We talk of what maps mean, what they hold. And I wonder, from this place, what pieces of non-description can I collect to create my own map?

I hold a palm-sized rock in my hand. I remember the journey across Comb Ridge, searching for artifacts and old footprints, contemplating what we will leave behind. I hear echoes off of valleys and wind sighs caressing hair, limbs, and patches of green. I remember the day, where the shadows of plants in the afternoon share space with the wispy movement of evaporating liquid, dancing mirage lines over hot rock. I see red rising sharp to the sky, infused with streaks of yellow and over-layed by gentle tan curves. I remember bare feet meeting small ridges, smooth pools, depressions and layers of time and tide, waves and wind passing under foot with each crest of the ridge. I smell the yellow day, stone sun-baked before the darkness sets, the land overripe from exposure.

I think I collect with hands as well as with megabytes because pictures are the thing, but they are not the thing. They lie on the surface with clear square boundaries. Pictures have limited perspective, even if it is one that I choose in the taking. Pictures portray beauty, grand or miniscule, but lose focus as to what lies to the side.

Rocks and sticks remember like metaphors. What you see and hold somehow connects to what you don’t really understand, landscapes we can’t really comprehend, singularities beyond ourselves. Rocks somehow connect to everywhere they’ve traveled, or at least everywhere I traveled. These pieces are simple with subtlety, and hold a new layer with each look and feel.

Perhaps I collect in an attempt to capture unmeasurable phenomena—life through dried remnants, spirit and time through smooth rubbed stones, destruction, recreation, and growth through a simple tree limb, and memories themselves.

Sand, wolfberry, a bulbous stem, leaf veins, gasps of color in drying flowers. Floating with me for a while, capturing a passing through the land.

Back to top


Learning from Lizards poem version prose version

A lizard appears by my side on a sun-baked sandstone ledge. I want to catch it, hold it in my hand, examine it with a scientist’s eye. Thoughts fly back to childhood lessons of reptiles, where cold-blooded bodies strung out on silver platters ready to be cut apart. Western rationality urges me to grab, to satisfy curiosity of sight and touch, to understand. But for some reason I stay my hand and rest it on a near-by rock, hoping the lizard will come to me. I think she would if I moved slow enough, but my hand’s sudden appearance scares her darting to a spot down the rock. I wish I could stay that still, take in as much as she does. Splay my fingers and toes out as far as her, sink into the rock, blend in with tanned skin and zigzag wrinkles and only the slightest movement of breath.

The lizard stares at me, locking me in her jet-black eye. Maybe she knows something I don’t, if only because her reptilian instinct has survived for millennia in this land while modern civilization tries to make every effort to separate from instinct. Logic apparently lifts us from our basal nature.

She jumps forward now, moving sporadically with ease. Coming closer to my hand, she is still tentative. I try to breath without moving, forcing myself to give up control. I think she knows I am foreign. Her head is at my finger, but it takes a few seconds to feel darts of lizard tongue tasting me, testing me. I wonder if she has teeth and a mouth big enough to bit. Even though I am big I feel vulnerable, and I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until she moves away.

The lizard circles and I keep my hand in place. This time I am prepared to slow myself. This time I feel the first filcks of her tongue. I am stilled by her touch. I wonder what she tastes—salt, dust, nervousness, desire. After a lifetime of testing me, a drop of rain makes her scamper. I watch intently as, both determined and uncertain, the lizard makes a leap to a rock on my left. I don’t understand her idiosyncratic movement. Her legs appear still, and she jolts so quickly yet is graceful and fluid. Only in calculated jumps can I see muscles tense, legs spring, feet stick. Otherwise I can’t tell where her propulsion comes from. Legs, fingers, toes seem to stay splayed and I think she must glide on rollers across the rock. She would not move that way in my hand. In watching her eccentricity I don’t think I could ever pin her down.

I want to know this lizard and struggle to stay still, struggle to not own the lizard by calling her mine. Too often we learn by taking a life out of context. We hack and dissect a flower to know its pieces and state with the flower’s dead certainty what it is and is not. That mindset makes me think I should know the lizard through captured knowledge, though it would be a limited and swift struggle to learn, What other way is there? Maybe, I think, like a cliché, I can be the lizard. So I shift my sleeve to rest my whole hand on the rock, intending to be cold-blooded and aware of molecules of heat to be gathered from particles of ancient sand. My movement startles her, eyes popping open, head darting. She comes closer. I get excited for more lizard kisses but she stops centimeters away. Maybe she knows this rock and all its crevices and is confused by this unusual protrusion. Am I different enough from this land to register to her? The depths of my mind churn and then stop as she, in swiftness, takes refuge in the space between the rock and my pinkie finger.

I will my hand to be still, sink down to the level of my cells so I can feel her presence under me, thinking I may catch a glimpse of the whole by sending curiosity through my pores. For a few minutes we stay, the lizard and I, and I have been chosen by one who belongs here. I am not the lizard. But I am not the dissector, destructor, intruder. I am shelter. I am heat. I don’t know what to make of this connection, so I don’t. I give control to the lizard.

The sun comes out from a bank of clouds and a few seconds later, or maybe it’s days, the lizard realizes my insufficiency and jolts to the rays of light. She stays close. I could keep trying, keeping my hand out for the possibility of touch. But I don’t push my luck. Instead I watch. I spread my toes and fingers into the rock.

Back to top


Nature Writing 2058

When grandchildren gather at my feet
tangled limbs
no familial uncertainty among these
cousins as siblings, aunts and mothers merging
as one brought together in a shrinking world

Will I tell them of a people gathering
learning to renew
learning to learn from renewals
Bedtime stories weaving people with the world
as we had to
for we are not separate
Just-so and fairy tales
told under soft light
reminding children of season’s turns
that the only time they have to fear the earth
is if they assume too much control

Or maybe words will chronicle
that we were the lucky ones
through chaos, abandonment,
of those left behind when water, money, oil ran short
others who returned to the earth
not perhaps by choice
surviving on pacts made with friends
on land made by sweat, blood
then, wide, fearful eyes will uplift through gently
turned pages of the few books that made it with us
remembering when huckleberries
were picked by young boys

As eyes close with tiredness
and a community of mothers, fathers take children to bed
I stare at my hands
wrinkled and sun-tanned and well used
as they should be
and think of a time when they pondered their future
wondering if they would be allowed to write
write about nature
and not be separated to a far-off bookstore corner

When hands are tugged at by grandchildren
I hope they have worked to build and rebuild
through a joining, and not separating, time
that they helped lift up, not push down for self-survival
that in their age they may still
make ripples in unobstructed water
feel the cold pin-pricks of un-gloved snowballs
dig deep into rich earth
plant new life, take care of old
and not tremble in fear for the
survival of the hands pulling mine

Back to top