In memory of, and with gratitude to, all those who have lost our heads to violence.
We lost our head the other day,
attenuating sight and sound and smell,
severing our capacity to feel
and digest this sacrifice of sacred nature.
With dominant arm of self-righteousness
we practiced malignant intent,
a sacrilegious suicide
this unholy separation of mind and sacred icon
of EarthSpace,
Tree of Life cut down,
leaving this abominated stump
with dying roots
stretching back and down to reach
our deepest rivers of nutrient Paradise.
And now Yin, mourning left hand of justice
grows silently incapacitated
by right-handed hubris
trading self-defensive weapons
predicating tools, offending nature’s incarnation.
Our denatured head grows silent
waiting for decaying EarthSelf to respond.
Why is this eternal silence
not enough,
a global omissioned sin?
Perhaps because our grieving is too loud
to recommit Earth Yinned arm to
restore our sacred space,
a paradise replacing
self-immunizing defenses with
self-immolating gratitude
for deeply graced ecologic,
our Tree of Life Cathedral
composed of countless recycling life rings,
each gradually growing silent
as its individuating season passes,
to move to core support,
endless trunk aligned with
EarthSelf’s permaculturing taproot.
Our beheading self-sacrilege
screams with holy loss,
defilement of humaned nature,
loss of hope for anything
but winter’s silent healing,
nurturing future’s seed.
Teach us bare-boned sacred silence,
grow our gratitude for winterish loss,
our remains deep-stretching hope
to comprehend Earth’s silent despairing diastasis,
sobbing decay weeps for
unremitted memory loss.
Rise up peaceful open-handed grace
of silent witness.
Burn fused weapons
into smooth-shelled water rafts
rising procession, springing sap
for reweaving Earth’s cultured pearls,
sacred silent wisdom,
a left-armed reach up
to greet right hand’s loss,
mutually caressing shared loss of mind.
As one falls silent severed
so do we all.
Dropping arms in empty bow
to rest on Earth’s warm skin.
Cold-hearted seeds of tears
for what we have begun,
a suicide procession
quietly emptying out of Eden.
This pilgrimage bows,
vows to return again
to silent natural grace,
uncommodified,
waiting with simpler cousins,
more helplessly free of self-defenses,
trees and hibernating animals,
making do with what rests stored,
vast wealth deposits melting out
toward starving margins of
reason’s boundary.
Winter water’s left-armed brittle peace,
a pacific self-sequestration
lays siege to tired and trembling Righteousness,
until at last we reconnect
our left and right
our Yang and Yin
our song and silence.
We retell our children
and they theirs
of this Great Head Turning.
Iconic scab of homeless body,
a trunk no longer growing rings
sings our silent mourning memory
for EarthTribe’s loss of seed.
Our sacrificial answer to sacrilegious question,
winter’s dark silence
until mourning accomplishes her healing task,
Earth’s dawning regenesis
of heart and breath
springing profoundly diverse sprigs
of interweaving gratitude
for winter’s rich composting blanket.
Fold arms,
stop marching in effraction baring markets,
to dance in harmoniously therapeutic
revolving, flowing
Gaian prehensive circles.