EarthCare Elders
repurposed our red brick industrial
BrownField

Including a rusted metal box
the size and shape of a giant’s coffin
orange and dingy brown
metallic flakes
floating toward sacred ground
along river’s sweeping bed.

Here lived a m other racoon
as had her Elder EarthMother
before her,
members of an indigenous EarthTribe
with river wisdom
long before our anthro-privileged
patriarchal/matriarchal political
and capital economic divisive time.

Because of Mother Racoon’s prior claim,
our Elders could not remove this blatant blight
from their waterfront views
when they salvaged the metal roof
beneath it
to install solar panels
and repurposed metal blades
for wind turbines
facing south
toward Long Island’s soundless waves
and marshy breezes,
rapture to the raptors.

So, instead of decapitation
the rusted tomb for racoon’s rest
was brushed,
redressed high up
above our healing river
and painted firey red
with a black raptor’s feathered eye
guarding west
across autumn’s sky
relentlessly watching
our rivered valley
as trees burn orange
and rich crimson
and mellow yellow.

Our sacred river eye
of gratitude for River Gaia’s flowing
watch back through transportive time.

She brought us rich soil,
luscious drinking water from the North,
seeds of grass,
raspberry and blackberry vines,
mountain laurel,
blueberry and cranberry bushes,
maple and oak and chestnut
and evergreens,

Edibles and ornamentals,
mushrooms and nuts,
berries and squash
and melons,
herbs and strawberries,
squirrels and frogs and b ears,
cats and wolves,
bats and eagles
flowing and following upstream sometimes

But, mostly down deep under,
sprouting magical thunder
awe and sacred wonder

All this
before our Raptor’s Eye
for those who see
what other’s hear
of EarthTribe’s mystery.