I wrote this poem after returning home to Colorado Springs after a deep plunge into the underworld through The Animas Valley Institute with eco-philosopher Geneen Haugen and Mary Marsden in Aravaipa, Arizona.

A couple of mornings upon arriving back to the coniferous forest and mountains where I live, from the vast open desert, I felt sorrow touch my soul for all that has been lost in the human traditions with the rise of patriarchy and the suppression of the Goddess.

In her essay Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering, Charlene Spretnak writes, “Our situation as a species is the following: the life-support systems of this almost impossibly beautiful planet are being violated and degraded, causing often irreparable damage, yet only a small proportion of humans have focused on this crisis.”

This poem touches on the sorrow of our current human situation, particularly the loss of the interconnectedness of nature and child. There are children in modernity who have never tasted dirt, hugged a tree, explored the soil, or walked with bare feet upon the earth. Part of this is due to the overgrowth of our population in this industrial age and the emotional immaturity of too many women and men unconsciously rearing children. To birth a child into this world is a sacred act.

I hope this poem inspires the reader to reflect on their relationship to children, themselves, and the world we humans want to create for future generations. Will we do the work needed to honor the sanctity of all human and non-human life to reclaim the interconnectedness of all things? In the accelerating world of AI and augmented reality, will we rise to protect the sacred lands we live upon? Will we acknowledge that the protection of the wildness of this planet is a deep protection of the innocence and wildness of the child and, thus, our human species? Will we stop having children because we are supposed to and only do so if we are truly ready and available for the deep love it requires to bring life into this world?

It is time to stop looking away from the devastation and horrors we have created as a human species and to grieve all that has been lost in the commodification of our souls and the wild beings of teeth, claws, wings, and branches. Perhaps our tears will taste the soil, and a new rose of beauty will rise.

Invocation For The Beautiful To Rise

A robin flew from a Mahogany bush
on a winter day, when the sky was grey. Then,
a deep blue western bluebird spread her wings over rosehip
bushes, and a friend of hers caught her tail in the wind, off they went
to the oak, whose leaves curled toward the misty clouds.

My boots walked on frozen red mud, as I saw the frost embraced
upon every branch of every bush and tree I could see.
I wondered what would be if this beauty disappeared,
if there were no wild earth to smell, touch, taste, feel—
as we cut and clear the forests to build the houses
and warehouses in our cities for our growing population.

And I recognized that there are children in this world already,
who have never seen these robins nest in mahogany,
or bluebird clans who gather in the oaks, or frost that
dazzles the grasses, bushes, and trees, or the hawks who soared
through the sky with their majestic wings just yesterday.

There are children who do not know what the word daffodil is,
who’ve never seen a hummingbird dance along the river, who’ve
only smelled synthetic laundry detergent, and polyester sweat.

And I wonder when mothers will stop bearing children who
do not want to have children, but only bear new life to perform
the mother script. When will man and woman ask if a soul wants to
be here, and if they are truly up for this task of radical love.

The consumers heart grows up from the ground, taking all it can,
manipulating beauty and creativity for its own twisted plans.
And yet, we are not things to be bought and sold, and neither is this
sacred land.

~