The Hoop and The Tree Chris Hoffman - Ecopsychology, Poetry, A Thriving Future |
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“The kind of joy bears would want if they were human”– Evan Hodkins, Director of the School of Alchemy |
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The first flakes of winter snow-- Ah-- the skeletons of tears. Go to the Holy DesertGo to the holy desertat night and look at the sky, where the stars extend beyond forgetting in the emptying blackness deep and high. They shine as clear as seeds of music in the stillness of a prayer; so many, they’ll turn till numbering’s numb round the tail of the northern bear. They accept everything that ever has been, including your life. Lying there, your body resolves to leather and bone, and then to a grain of sand on a shore between two mysterious oceans where outward and inward expand. Then secret beings crossing out and in may brush you with their wings and stir you to resonance with each moment like a harp’s quivering strings. Go to the holy desert at night and look at the sky, where the twin cliffs above you open like eyelids and you are the pupil of the infinite eye. The Man and the WomanThe man is a cottageand the woman is a tree beside the door. The man is a rock in a boulder field and the woman is snow, melting. He worships beauty and wants to make all good things fruitful. She is the daughter of Spoon Woman. Her lap is fragrant and soft as tundra. Spoon Woman lives forever, growing younger and older, older and younger. He is learning to dig a pit, and pour blood into it, and weep. When Spoon Woman is older her face is like bark and her hair is where the river has eaten its bank away leaving matted and tangled roots. When Spoon Woman is younger she is vanilla and a newly washed cotton nightgown, sweet from drying in the sun. He is the son of the One Who Starts Things Up. Jumped by the Grizzly Man, meeting the Dream Man, he carves stone arrowheads and makes pictures in the sand. Talk to the stars now. She says: Mother, Grandmother. He says: Father, Grandfather. When the man and the woman meet, each one asks: “What sound is this person today?” Today he is the song of the barn swallow and she is soft rain weaving a sash on the pond. Tonight he is the sound of a coyote’s paw digging in snow, she the sound of an acorn sprout pushing through the damp earth. In their bed the two of them sleep curled about each other. And that spiral winds through the whole world. |