Real Magic
I am a witchy woman
uncertain of her path
yet feeling
with a 7th sense of knowing
the tethers of a collective whole
feeling moved to speak
knowing that
nature has a love for living
It is innately self healing and forgiving
Long in neglect it will rise up and bless
the hand that tends each sign it sends
of need to seed it each pain to ease it
Our simple place in a most complex grace
No more than that to apease it
So I began…
The bees have returned
Drawn to
the flowers that drew
my first humming bird
tall plants in which to hide
brought wildlife back to abide
Food. Water. Shelter.
Offerings have always
fed not Gods but life passing by.
Do you not hear the call
to return to stewardship?
It was in the snow that fell twice past Mid-April
It was in the flooded crops of rivers breaching banks in June
It is in the coolest July I can ever remember
It is not true
that with enough money at stake
anything can wait or be bought and forced to
or that we can do nothing when we can not do everything
It was that line of reasoning that started all this.
Do you not see that greed is an obsession?
That we have traded self sufficiency
for convenience and dulled senses?
traded agriculture for industry
while our strong backed
sons and daughters
were working to make rich
captains of industry
manufacturing all that was homemade
for home and family needs
From textiles, needle arts and decorative
Profiting not only from our labor
But from selling us
All that no one was home to make
Dinners in a basket
Ho-hoes, Twinkies and Ding dongs
No more women in aprons
telling stories snapping beans
For the next day’s supper
family farms became factories
They wouldn’t bail out the farmer
But they bail out the banks
Now nothing is built to last
Poorly constructed designed
to break or be out date soon
with materials made to not biodegrade
add technology to our industry
Amass mountains of disposable products
metals to be harvested from
parts that release airborne toxins
Into the lungs of the children
that are the future
While
whole countries
hide their waste
out in the open
waters?
To wash up on tired shores
the premises being,
who gets around to
THAT side of the ocean
where the natives are poor
the coral is already dying and broken?
Centuries old knowledge and instincts
are being forgotten along with thousands
of years of resources depleted
Dumping a mix out of a box
and adding water
Is not
baking from scratch
and diamonds simulated in a lab
are not diamonds
Our children no longer have the know how
that our grandparents once did
they would feel lost in the dark
without a microwave
So let us begin again now
to speak to our elders
about how it all was done
before the rush to cities and towns
Let us begin to grow something
in any space we can
on roof tops and empty lots,
on sink edges and deck rails
in repurposed containers and old pots,
no land to call your own
go hydroponics in Tupperware
grow flowers or little care bulbs
it is the heart of the gardener
that is being grown
after all
And the real magic is in the earth
Let your feet feel the connection
and the dirt warm in your hand
It is healing
It is empowering
Imbibe in the color green
Let your shorn lawns grow long
to enrich the soil and protect it in drought
Plant fruits, berries and nuts
once
and they will come back
year after year
Save gas
shop and work at home
tend your part and I will mine
the land on which we stand
is but a square in an infinite amazement
not blanketing us but the very life
that runs though us and on beyond us
and know what the lies really are
If we tend it, it will heal
Food. Water. Shelter.
Everything multiplies.
You see the longer we think
it is too late to do anything
the longer we waste in wait
the more money they can make
feeding us upon single
servings individually wrapped
stuffed in a cardboard frame
so they won’t slosh in a near empty box
They show us how soon the end is near
how fast it will look like we were never here
When the waters
burst free
from all their trappings
when we are no longer here
to operate the locks and dams
our skyscrapers will crumble back to rainforests
in just a couple hundred years
Yet we can not go back fifty even half way
to save our species?
They want us to wait, they want us to procrastinate
They want us to debate and do what they tell us to
while they sell us more merchandise at 10 times the cost
How, I ask, can I sway you?
To for once
ponder how simple it would be
to sow instead of reap
To refuse to wipe your backside
on ancient forests
with one hand
While ordering up a plate
with the other
that pays for the raping
scraping raw of all life
upon the ocean floor
all flora and fauna
We are devouring
other life forms to extinction
poisoning
every living thing including ourselves
on a daily basis
We need to reconnect to the memory
be less needy of our wants
more in touch with our needs
we would begin to live on less and have more
Just by stopping
all that buys our way into hell
Lets keep it real
at the rate we reproduce
we were once meat as well
try living as there is no trying dying
Brightfire Woman © 2009 All rights reserved.
This is B.B. King singing at the first farm aid in 1985 In Champaign, Illinois and I remember this number as I am looking up from below watching the sweat roll down his cheek and from the best I can tell since I am short I am one of those below stage level waving arms. Hey, I fought for that position starting from back bleachers. It seemed an appropriate reconnect. And my God I sure felt differently about crowds back then...it is the first footage I have seen having been there I kinda missed the telethon at home. Also you will notice the tarp over the camera as we were soaked most the day in utter downpours. I remember thinking we were saving the farms for good...not so.
