Morthava’s Kin are Dying

Morthava’s kin are dying,
and they cannot run away.
 
Wild and treed places
in California and Oregon,
Washington and Colorado,
fires burn from lightning strikes,
in Amazonia and Indonesia,
and months ago in Australia,
fires burn because man has set them,
either by careless stupidity or twisted intention
or by environmental changes
connected to human’s
insatiable greed for more and more.
 
Morthava’s kin are dying,
and they cannot run away.
 
Morthava Wellingtonia
is rooted in a special place in Bath,
recently she reached out in her
anger and grief
asking my why –
why are her kin all over
the planet burning?
 
Morthava’s kin are dying,
and they cannot run away.
 
I have no answer to offer this
tall, wise and deeply rooted one
whose shaggy bark and needled
limbs give comfort to humans
and a home to many others,
others we disregard, ignore, dismiss
because we cannot see them,
choose not to know
who live in all trees,
everywhere.
 
Morthava’s kin are dying,
and they cannot run away.
 
Her pain is palpable,
continues to be palpable,
as I open slowly to the cries
and challenges of my tree kin;
as I now allow myself to feel
a pain rooted literally
in those who cannot flee
the fires or the saws,
those whose resident
communities of others
have nowhere else to go,
for they are also rooted
with their tree hosts,
dependent upon the tree
for food and shelter,
as they have been for millennia.
 
Morthava’s kin are dying,
and they cannot run away.
 
No longer can I flee, either,
the truth that humans’
presumed and barely questioned
sovereignty over creation
and its domination
on the use, overuse, abuse
of every resource,
for some are told it was,
after all, put here for us.
 
Morthava’s kin are dying,
and they cannot run away.
 
Our wilful disrespect
for other’s habitats and the wild places
where our own distant kin,
let alone our kin among the other,
found a way of life, a way of being
that is now on the brink of ceasing,
our greed and our reckless disregard,
our selfishness, our arrogance,
place all of us and all
our other kin in danger.
 
Right now, Morthava’s kin are dying,
and they cannot run away,
some places it is happening already.

We see the flame burnished skies,
choking everything that lives within
the fires’ ravaging ranges
and well beyond – shock.

We read that rust furred orangutans
trying to find food when their
forests are gone are killed
for trying to survive
as their world disappears – shock.

We are told that if we cleared 
the leaves, dead trees and brush
off the forest floor,
so it would resemble a city park 
with as much biodiversity,
then there would be no fires – shock.
 
Still, still we resist what deep down
we know is that it will not be long before
we will all know what
Morthava’s kin know now,
that there is not running away,
we have nowhere else to go.

To avoid confusion, I should have noted (see Lorna’s comment below and my response) that Morthava is the name that particular tree gave me to address her. Usually, those names are kept between the individual tree and myself (in this case she also allowed me to tell my husband since it is a tree that is also special to him); however, this time given the magnitude and severity of the situation that direction/understanding was waived by the tree so that I could share her message.

Closed for the Night

Recently, I have been allowing myself to open up more to the world around me. To the dancing of the wind scattering the long strands of my hair into wondrous tangles. To the patter of the rain on my back as I work in the garden. To the summer sun, with whom I have an uneasy truce. To the mad chuttering of the squirrels, impatient calling of the magpies and the sweet songs of the small birds who visit our feeders. I am able to do this from the time I get up in until the sun goes down.

From sunset to sunrise, I find that I have close myself off and down again, to anything beyond the safe walls of my home. I sense quite acutely now the creatures of my immediate and farther landscape. But for now I will not allow myself to extend, because I daren’t engage with the countryside in my county. The Badger Cull has returned.

I simply cannot bear to hear the silent cries of the dying or feel the agony of the wounded. I learned this last year. I am not strong enough to endure this once more. At sunset, I offer ‘prayers’ to the gods and spirits of the land that the Badgers do not suffer when they are exterminated. It is, I admit, the request of one who knows better, because there will only be suffering. No only for the Badgers killed, but for the members of setts decimated in the nightly carnage.

In the morning, I wake to the beauty of the sunrise, the bird song, the view of my yew and apple trees, but I am still haunted by the knowing that so may of my Badger kin will never know the feeling of the wind over their backs, the rain on their noses or the sun warming the entrance to their sett. I pause and as I give thanks for another day, I whisper farewell to those who have died during the night in a misguided attempt to control a disease that has by now in the land itself. harder still is that we will never know how many healthy Badgers died, and died in vain.

 

Frost Folk

The nights dark on darker
cold on colder
shelter the growing of the Frost Folk,
who cannot live in the bright light
or warmth of the day.

The Frost Folk live in shadows,
short is their time the Mayflies of winter
rising up of an early morn
sinking into oblivion before day’s end,
yet they are musicians
making music in crunching thin ice
and the slow mournful drip of their death.

The Frost Folk grow over rock and heather,
altering the structure
of fragile flowers too late blooming,
reaching up from the edges of leaf
for a better view of a world
observed but briefly.

The Frost Folk are the denizens of winter
they are those who paint on glass
shiny textured undecipherable images
and who decorate the grasses
in white lace and bangles of crystal luminescense.

Pause and delight in the Frost Folk’s gifts
for even in winter
they are not always present
making music or leaving art
in the wake of their passage across
our landscapes from the mysterious
world from which the grow
and to which as droplets they return
weeping for a life too short
and a cold darkness not long enough.

Dryads Retreat

Dancing to unheard music
played deep
within their being,
Dryads toss branches
shake twigs
to shed their leafy mantles,
encouraging
the
earthward
tumble
as days shorten,
their time of retreat approaching.

They quiver preparing,
less and less turned outward,
their focus shifting,
until no longer sustaining
summer’s verdiditas
or autumn’s splendour,
replaced by subtle energy for winter,
releasing the past demanded.

A sharp gust of sudden wind
no reason to hold longer
freefalling
golden
rain
pirouetting on stems
last leaves languid
on the breeze
downward
delicate
drifting
death,
amassing in wind raked clusters.

Frolicking on curb sides
boot tossed shuffled through,
children gather them
attracted to the colours
red bronze copper yellow brown,
drawn by the shapes
oak birch beech poplar sycamore plane,
contorted as they shrivel,
diminishing,
retaining a different beauty
past feeding earth feeding future,
nourishing our souls,
granting needful lessons:
There is no permanence.
There is always change.
There are cycles to being.
Living comes in many forms
Dying is not only what it appears to be.

Samhaintide

Prepare now
for the Samhaintide
make ready
for the delicate dawns
the diaphanous dusks
are upon us.

They will not last long,
these daybreakings
these nightfallings,
before we realise
all will return to what
we know well
and cope with better.

As the light shrinks itself
making room for expanding darkness,
when the constellations
more brightly dance
singing across the star strewn sky,
we keep the Samhiantide.

Out the corner of the eye,
was that a shimmer,
a swiftly darting energy
manifested momentarily,
the shadow stealthily
moving as a cloud across sky?

Barely audible
almost beyond our hearing,
was that thrumming,
the muffled chanting of the ancestors,
just the comfortable side of discordant,
who no longer sing in our harmonies
whose melodies grate the senses?

Yet, yet the sight of them fills
us with wonder and reassurance,
their musics astonish offering us solace,
we do not know how
it is possible for us to understand.

Samhaintide,
prepare to encounter what
we do not expect and accept
what we embodied
do not now understand.

The mystery of death,
the other birth
shrouded until the last moments,
and let us not wait until death is upon us,
to embrace and be embraced by
the reality we are not alone
either in our living or our dying.

Open and let go,
prepare now
for the Samhaintide
make ready
for the delicate dawns
the diaphanous dusks
are upon us.

They will not last long,
these daybreakings
these nightfallings,
before we realise
all will return to what
we know well
and cope with better . . .
unless we choose
a different way of being.