As her EarthDay drum calls out
to inside outside severance

Amid EarthTribe’s gathered laughter
and sorrow,
speaking
and listening,
singing
and silent witnessing,

Earth’s wealth
leaks nutritional health
gifts sharing value with every messiah
in sunshine circles
of care giving
and receiving
sacred shifts
toward cherished bright esteem.

In this sacred win/win culture
of indigenous compassion,
all celebrants cooperatively steward
gifts circling through reciprocity
and back toward MeWe integrity
again.

We dance in sacred circles of meaning,
not merely in secular cause-effective lines
for capitalizing straight efficient purpose

We learn to share our passion
while watching red berries
offer up their healthing gifts
from strong-hearted root systems
co-empathic,
synergetic nurturing networks.

Small seeds
cherished gifts
reminding We to Me
Mother Seeds make merry
underground,
beneath humane hearing.

EarthDay gifts
trust me,
and us,
to uphold our sharing systems,
disperse our safe and healthy seeds
to each new sacred place
to know
and grow,
which is good for berries
and their students

Reminding elders
all win/win flourishing
is mutually healthy thrival
flow.

Depressing anxiety
about future certain consumer losses,
like mortality
of ego’s timid bare humanity,
extract possibilities
for healthy Earth Day resilient impressions
at every future imagined turn
to hoard more gifts.

In healthier indigenous EarthDay circles
living lands are teaching gifts,
not subservient property
for supporting self-convenienced students

Inside looking
and listening through a screened speaker
not noticing Earth is first
a birth of whole-sum seeds
before we close our hardened doors
for protecting empty closed mines
without a humanely engineered
shovel for digging hidden
hoarded inside treasures.

We are EarthBound
by a win/win covenant
of regenerative reciprocity
breathing in healthy gifts
breathing out wealthy shifts
winter and summer,
predator and prey,
fire and grass,
night and day,
dying and living
power dark and bright lights

Cosmic dancing
co-gravitating gifted muses
wrapping and unwrapping
Earth Days and Nights again

In this dance of the giveaway
we remember Earth springs forth
and harvests back songs
we need for win/win
hoarding lose/lose mourning
passage of polar bears,
silence of cranes,
death of rivers
transporting gifts like
winter’s wounding snow
swelling banks
expanding loss

Perhaps too late
for future healthy regenerations
we may, this Earth Day,
recognize dazzling gifts
from MotherEarth’s womb
as WeMe teeters on the cusp
of our Great UnGift Extinction.

Let us hold tall
and spread wide
our liberally loving gifts
of our own cooperative making
copassionate warming acts
transcendently soaring ideas
perfect regifting tools
are not offensive weapons
fiercely defending against loss
of all Earth’s days
now given before

Tomorrow’s gifts of mind
hands
heart
voice
silence
vision
revision
offered up
and out,
down
and in
on behalf of sacred Earth.

Whatever our gift,
we are called to give
and regive,
to dance for renewal
of EarthTribe’s world
in return for MeWe privilege
to breathe in
and out
Earth’s living love.

Note: This piece is inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Epilogue: Returning the Gift” pp. 380-384, in Braiding Sweetgrass. It includes some phrases that are hers but without quotation marks. I want to claim poetic license but also to not tread on Kimmerer’s copyright. With gratitude and in the spirit of Both/And dialogue.