Old Forest Tribes

"Alone is a word without meaning in the forest." Robin Wall Kimmerer, "Braiding Sweetgrass" Old rotting trees, corrupt degenerating logs, give birth to more forms of diverse life than they did in their most transcendent living moments brought to them by Elder networking root systems, and Father Sun's most radiant embrace, and Mistress Earth's most abundant flow of moisture; short of catastrophic floods. Just right flowing strength of healthing wealth. And each of us humane egos hopes for the same; That our regenerative legacy of mind and spirit will long outlast our bodies corrupting toward alone within this shrill cacophony of growing tribal fears, angers about injustices of Earth's redistributing, scandalously democratic, grace. Artifacts of tribal violence predict legacies more like old native forest fires than slower degenerative effects of wind and rain and hungry insect tribes of Earth. Cremation of regenerative destiny rather than burial, yet even here humane ashes enrich sacred fertility. Earth's minerals feed matriarchal fungi as Sun's light fuels patriarchal algae. In this lichen forest of our anthrocentric and animal and tree and plantation lives and deaths, alone speaks lonely fear of violent burned-out death, a revolutionary moment within Earth's redolent forest of potential timeless relationship. Absolute, like autonomy, are words not spoken in old growth forest life within death.