Monday, August 19, 2013

Belly Brain~for Greg Sarris

Some say if you you adopt a sitting place in nature / say by a creek / and visit it regularly / alone and in silence  

A first note may be offered to you / on any random inhalation  
( easily missed )
The re-routed red signalling of rock and moving water store the ancestral Holdings of the spot
Some say songs are embedded there for preservation / bestowed on a few
And only the most patient listeners of voices once eroded and damned.  Now Testifying.
Revealing a * "storied landscape.''

Some say that chapters are held in layers of soil
Parables buried in sand silt and clay
Indigenous memory ( when we were all indigenous )
Of story-song that comes from the intrinsic 
Inclusiveness of the "particular place" / the "every place" in all directions.

Some say our deep listening will act like a fertile Delta of reclamation
Present like the presence that redeems it's past / the future that sees itself  Unborn
The thrum of live elemental tapestries
Knotted to the well-being of individual~ family~ tribe.

 * "storied landscape": a term used by Greg Sarris, Chief of the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria in response to my inquiry about an area of Miwok land in West Marin.

1 comment:

  1. Some might say this poem, like a sit spot, "the thrum of live elemental tapestries" as in your delicious lines:

    "Some say our deep listening will act like a fertile Delta of reclamation
    Present like the presence that redeems it's past / the future that sees itself Unborn
    The thrum of live elemental tapestries"

    ReplyDelete