To see the world through innocence
interconnected in its display of magnificence
like rivers flowing through the earth,
pulsing with life and joyous mirth,
clean, corrupted, calm or chaotic
all by the choices and decisions
of melancholic or well conducted humans
is to see myself, where I stand
in all our relations to love and land.
My blood, my body, my veins
runs the mirror, the reflective same.
When my arteries clog and churn
from careless fueling that burns black
in this fragile vessel, I ask if we can turn back?
I see the same sickness
in the tears rivers cry
we let take hold, as wickedness to die.
The beating heart of the planet
echoes in the repetitive rhythm of lost art
a cardiovascular devotion, prayer by prayer
pumping soul through soil, layer by layer.
As concrete floods the land
and the earth forgets, masked by blood in sand
how to breathe and let free
so too
does the fertile ground within me
wither
without the depth of breath below
I hold too tight and shallow.
We clutch and choke ourselves
on the fumes of mills,
brush strokes of hell,
and on the vapors of addiction,
mirroring infliction
on a world out of rhythm and pulse.
How we treat anything
is how we treat everything.
So I return
to cold water on bare skin,
to fresh air as medicine,
with reverence to my common living kin,
offering presence as a prayer without sin.
And this
simple deliverance
moves me through forest floors
to offer with the same elegance
for rivers, for trees, for time and more.
As wind will
serenade treeless forests,
so will breath pass, as I miss them
through lungs
that forgot to listen.
As thoughts consume the mind,
so too do screens blind
and devour our youth—
thumbs chasing dopamine gone viral
in digital truthless spirals,
scrolling, past, wisdom
written in dirt
and kingdom sky.
Return.
Return to the earth.
let your sit bones root and rebirth
let your breath bow beyond turmoil
from the soul soil that made you.
Be ambient and soft,
with this sentient world.
And remember often:
You are not separate.
You are of it.
Earthwalker, your name
Be one and the same.
For how you treat anything
is
how you treat everything.