primordial resources ~ paleopoetics / MYTHOPOETICS

CHILDREN BORN NOW ~ DAN HANRAHAN

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THINGS TO REMEMBER AS THIS WORLD DIES

Art by Annelie Solis

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You did not come here to pay bills and die
nor did you come to build the fortunes
of those destroying the Earth

Imagine instead
that you came to gather precious things
fallen from the pockets of Ancient Ones
as they fled the desert’s march -
each a reminder of something
they pledged never to forget

Things like
how to call birds by name with your whistle
which news to tell the bees
and which to share only with the moon
how to tell a parliament from a conspiracy
a colony from a convocation

Things like
Nature has no race or nation, class or creed
except when humans seek to deceive -
division designed to sever you
from kith and kin and buddha-mind

Things like:
the antidote to oppression
is not freedom but belonging
the opposite of domination is communion
the medicine you need
is always outside your door
and there’s likely a wise woman
two streets away
to show you how to use it

These things were left to help us remember
how each world before has ended
and how each death became a door to new life
and how this world wants to take you in her arms
and make of you a lover
and have you listen to the land
talk to the stream
find meaning in the silence of trees
and wisdom on the singing breeze

Listen awhile to discover
the right season for all the ten thousand things
the ninety-nine names we use for our own divinity
how to share power
so it cannot be captured by the vain and greedy
how to step into the flow of life
and make of the Earth a common treasury for all beings
how to map the stars
learn the lesson of each constellation
and still know there is more in heaven and earth
than any of us were ever meant to know

So fill your pockets as this world dies
knowing some of it will guide you to the next
and some will fall to the ground
in time to be found
by those who’ll bring the world back to life.

***

Chris Taylor

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five ways

Dry brown, dry grass hills resting like a hand, a pattern
of rise and shadowed folds where dark and light keep kin
in the lands’ movement through time, it’s old old story
of uplift and erosion, through light and dark, dreaming
into being trees and waters and creatures, all our ancestors

scaled and winged, carapaced and furred, our ancestors
with two legs, two hands, two eyes to see and hold the patterns
in the hills like hands, patterns in the stars’ dreaming
light between darkness, in the maple leaf, the turtle’s claw, our kinship
with it all, connections held in patterns that move through our stories

that deft hands twine into baskets--dry rush grass and willow--holding stories,
patterns of breath that blow through dry reeds into songs holding dreams
and visions: hills opening like hands, memories of the deep ancestry
in the maple leafs’ unfurling, in the snakes’ skin patterns--
spiraling diamonds pressed into clay vessels to hold memory of kinship,

hold and carry it forward to descendants, to us, distant kin
so we might now hold the clay in our hands and hear its story--
even broken, even in shards, the curve, the dry earth scent, the pattern
of deep-pressed triangles like snake skin, spiraling—feel our ancestors’
hands in the making of memory, shaping of knowledge and dream

into earthen form. Even now, when the dry hills are blackened; ash drifts like dreams,
rising in whirlwinds over scorched grass to mingle with shattered turtle shell,

ancestors’ bones dried to dust, grains of eroded mountains and shed snake skins--a kinship
of the particulate--spiraling upward to meet rain, to fall back to earth, a story
of returning, re-membering, the cycle of the whole and the wholeness of the pattern.

Look: hands like maple leaves, like river deltas holding memory of kinship, ancestry.
Listen: the dry wind’s rush; the rainfall; the rocks’ silence—dreams that teach, stories
we have not forgotten but not remembered. Hands: hold to each other, hold the pattern.

***
​
 Caroline Le Guin
(with gratitude to Tyson Yunkaporta for teaching about the five ways of
​knowing, and how to hold remembering in my hand)
​
Images: "Five Treasures" by Dixie Yelvington, Diana Heyne, unknown x2

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MYSTERY IS WRITING A BEAUTIFUL STORY

The wind picks up and I am called to attention.
Mystery is speaking directly to me,
And I have prepared myself to hear.
Out here in the canyon lands I have been fasting,
Making myself available to the dawn, to the stars in their slow spin around Polaris,
Completing the work already tasked me through dreams and journeys,
Ready for more,
Ready to take the next step,
Ready to be of full service.

There is a Beautiful Story being written
Of challenge and triumph.
Of Mystery and Magic,
Of survival in the face of domination.
This story has always been.
It is archetypal to life on Earth.

We can acquiesce to colonization.
And in the beginning we were forced to, on pain of death, torture, and persecution,
As the wave marched across the Earth.
But we remember.
We Love.
We, like droplets of mercury, gather again in a wake behind that wave of crushing force.

Earth is Sentient.
Mycelium is sentient.
The Forest is a culture of sentient beings.
Our kin yearns to hear the drum again.
To feel the story weaving power of the council fire,
To be brushed as we collect dry kindling from living trees,
To feel our artistry partner with Hers in the sacred beauty we tend,
To be amplified, loved and seen through our gratitude and prayers.

Mystery is writing a Beautiful Story of us.
Beyond what the eyes can see and the tools of science can measure,
The world is teeming with energies, forces and guides.
The Soul Journey,
An adventure of listening, learning, guidance, bravery, humility, challenge and triumph on our way to becoming wise.
Earth Culture,
An intricate web of humans listening and participating in Mystery’s Great Story,
Feet on the soul journey learning,
Wizening ones weaving again the central pattern of the village,
Agents in our great becoming,
Making visible again the Tree of Life.
Navigating survival and thrival as a People, as we always have.

This is my place,
Once and always,
Soul guide,
Weaver,
And here, now, I am in service to those that hear the Great Loom’s shuttle pass across the threads,
Whose soul is a bright thread,
Knowing they are agents of cultural change,
Midwives of Earth Culture,
Protectors of our home, the Web of Life, for those yet to come.

***

Jonah Ruh Roberts (Raven), social media August 2025

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magic words

In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen–
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.
​
***
​
Inuit, translation Edward Field

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the new archaic

Art by James R. Eads

In the beating of my heart I hear
the beating of your drums,
In the whirring of my brain I hear
the shaking of your rattles and
your dusty steps.
I myself take up the rhythm;
I myself take up the dance.

In the beating of the drum,
I lay down my hours,
lay down my time,
lay down these thick
and heavy ways.
I lay down this kind of time
and take up the ancient ways,
recalling the not-forgotten.
I lay my self down in long-ago trance.

In the beating of the drum, I hear
your feet come near to me, hear your
hearts in my own body,  your thoughts
in my own mind, strong and clear as
shining stars, deep and long as rivers run.

Nearer now celestial wheels, your spirits
awake my ears; beaming faces full of hope,
you know and claim me as your own.
My own beloveds, yes, and look behind you!
Back and back spirals are turning,
eternally bearing, beaming, whirring.

On the double helix road, walking
the heartbeat way, out of time and space
and into re-membering of bonds never broken.
Face-to-face, you reach in deep and pull a
still-life snake from inside the guts of me.
Wake this sleeping snake, you say,
And begin the new archaic.

***
​
Anne Benvenuti, 2008

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REMEMBERING

"Earth Work" by Anahit Burke

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We are touching and touched
by ancestral guidance
in the waters, wind, and soil
in sunlight and stardust
in the migrations
of whales and hummingbirds
in each seed
who becomes a tree
in the vast fields
of brilliant energy
flowing through
and between us
and radiating
far beyond our earth

***
​
JoAnne Dodgson 

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the word

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
​I want the word that says
I feel it all, all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it--
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.

***

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,   Ecological Grief,   Climate Change    &    Polycrisis  Workshop

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