Think! Are You Thinking?

(A poem reflecting on the Transformations2019 Conference and events in Santiago, Chile, October 2019, where the conference was held.)

My people cried today.

Enough is enough, they said.

Surely, enough is enough.

We rise. We stand. We speak.

Enough is enough.

We take back our power.

We rise.

We rise in anger, hopelessness, and fear.

We rise in fearlessness.

We will rip to shreds your trains,

We will burn buses and their stations, buildings.

We will loot and pillage to take what we need.

We disrupt what you see as order,

As the way things must be.

Do not ask us what is wrong.

For you know and do not care.

Do not ask us to stand down.

For we know you do not care.

We rise, we rise, until you can hear.

We rise.

What are you thinking?

Are you thinking?

Think.

The land cried today.

Parched land cried today.

Streams into rivers into oceans, flooded land.

Tears for what has already been done.

The droughts, parching, desiccating, simmering

Like the people who rise and rise without end.

Violent and unrelenting storms come now,

Pouring down overheated land that cannot absorb,

Dropping branches of weakened trees

Into paved over streets and monoculture grassy yards

And fields and fields of one thing only.

Fields that have erased the grasses, ferns, flowers, trees,

The diversity that speaks of abundance.

Abundance that once was.

Giving way to unspeakable singleness,

Unknowable deadness.

Earth speaks to us. Asks for what she needs.

Can we listen to her plea?

She is telling us what to do.

Can we listen?

Can we hear?

Can we rise in new ways?

All of us together, as one?

What are we thinking?

Are we thinking?

Think.

The land cried today

Small streams to great rivers of tears

Filling salted oceans with sorrow

For all its losses.

The land speaks,

You can no longer desecrate my beings.

I have no tolerance for your insanity,

For your unwitting greed.

Telling what we need to know,

If we can only hear.

The land speaks.

Where once were forests

Supporting life in many forms

You choose, you choose to cut, to cut, to destroy.

Ah yes, you planted once again but

A single species cannot support the life

The abundance that once lived here.

Your choices make no sense to me, the land.

What are you thinking?

Are you thinking?

Think.

The land speaks and says

Life is what matters, all of life,

All my relations, Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ. We are all one.

We are all related, all connected, as the Lakota know.

Ubuntu, I am because we are, as all of Africa knows.

But you do not seem to care. Think. Are you thinking?

Is it greed, the quest for more?

More money, more wealth, more and more and more

Of stuff that does not matter.

Worthless symbols, emblematic of power, greed, and want.

Deprivation. Desertification. Desiccation.

The land speaks with drought and fire, dried up rivers,

Streams of what once were life-giving tears.

She burned today, the result of your greed,

And wanton destruction. Your thoughtlessness.

Are you thinking? What are you thinking?

Do you not care?

Where once were forests

Supporting life in many forms

You chose, you chose to cut, and maim, to murder

What was not you.

Yes, you planted once again but

A single species that cannot support life

There is no undercoat where my creatures hide.

No way to regenerate what was lost.

My plains, my forests, my prairies,

Mountains with their tops blown off

To satisfy your greed.

Mountains that stand in the distance,

Rockies, Andes, Alps, Himalayas,

Built of shifting Earth, rising up in anger

That you will not listen.

I spit fire at you from deep within

That is life.

The oceans speak today

Filled with plastic,

In enormous swirls that deaden.

Endless spills of black gold

That destroy all that’s in their stream.

Taken all my creatures

For short-lived pleasures without regard

To the consequences.

Destroyed my whales, my marine bounty,

My corals, the endless abundance that once was.

Taken many creatures in your quest

Without regard for other, for the dignity

That they have.

Think. What are you thinking? Are you thinking?

Are you seeing?

The air speaks today of violent storms,

That come quickly, leaving destruction in their path.

Tearing limbs from trees, roofs off houses,

Drowning floods from the sky.

They ask, who is thinking, what are you thinking?

Can we listen?

Oh, can we listen now? Think. Are you thinking?

What are you thinking?

The people speak today.

The poor, the unvoiced, the marginalized.

The young who see an unlivable future.

Erupting in violent protest,

Asking only for equity, for justice,

In a world where some take and take

And have so much.

While others in their corrugated boxes,

Struggle day-to-day for enough.

The people speak today in fires,

In marches that sing and sting,

Jumping over hurdles to make their voices heard.

The people speak today.

Of what they are thinking. Yes, they are thinking.

Can we listen?

Can we hear?

Can we see?

Think.