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.