Awakening to the Red Road: An Ecopoetic Odyssey 'Part 1 of 6'
"Awakening to the Red Road: An Ecopoetic Odyssey"
I. Anthropocentric Dissonance
- Daniel Henry Rodgers
Do you hear that rumbling?
That's the ancient woodlands wailing, crying out!
I can hear their echoes mourning as
we silence those whispering tree elders,
Sacrificing their hard-earned truths on the
bloodstained altar of our selfish wants and empty riches.
We humans swagger through these groves,
acting like we're masters of it all, arrogantly crowning
Our damn selves as lords over every creature, plant, and form of life –
playing god, recklessly dictating
Which beings earn the right to thrive,
wither away to cold dust and brittle bone.
We've devolved into a parasitic breed,
our swollen egos draining
This world of its profound worth and beauty. Blinded, we can't perceive
The sacred spark, the divine breath animating all of creation, no.
In our self-consumed crusades, we treat life as mere resource ?
Fuel for our ecocidal rampages stripping the land to its very bones.
Yet my brothers and sisters from the Haudenosaunee Nation,
they still revere that Great Tree of Peace,
Holding that reverence close, while we've let it become
a relic gathering dust on the shelf.
Honoring the Peacemaker's teachings that we've shoved aside,
let slip from our hearts and minds ?
The wisdom of "All Life is Sacred" that our kind has forgotten,
forsaken in our blind pursuits.
But we just can't seem to quit unraveling those sacred threads,
pulling and picking at that delicate soulful life,
Careless, clumsy hands tearing apart the masterpiece,
that was gifted to us to protect, to cherish.
With every selfish act, every discordant cry,
I let rip raw from my core across these ancient lands,
That haunting dissonance swells,
a rising tide drowning out life's sacred symphonies.
A haunting dissonance smothering the harmonics of living-
and dying all around me.
Each time I turn a deaf ear to the earth's groaning laments,
every time I let greed drown out her melodies.
Still, I feel it burning ? that resilient,
rebellious hope within the discord,
A clear voice piercing the din, pleading –
"Wake up, open your eyes, realign!"
Can't you hear our ancestors wailing,
ringing out like a clanging bell?
If we let our hubris drown out
their sacred symphony much longer,
Then mark my words,
the silence of these woods will become our undoing.
Copyright ©
Daniel Henry Rodgers
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