Earthmaker

Earthmaker, our mother,

Covers the ground with flowers

And breaks open the soil to make way

For the sprout bending its head

Dreaming of the sun.

She releases the seeds of Aspens

That dream of their someday leaves,

Shivering in the wind,

Their undersides silvery and flashing.

Earthmaker, our mother,

Holds in her embrace

Her giant Sequioa sons

As well as the memory resting in the fossils of their prehistoric brothers.

She holds the buried acorns that will be her

Sturdy Oaken daughters,

As well as the memory of those long ago first fern-like plants

About which so little is known.

Earthmaker knows.

Earthmaker, our mother

Sees every child of hers grow or not grow.

She mourns the ones who leave her embrace

She wraps herself in a fourfold robe of night sky, fire, water and loam.

And nurses her sadness for the lost

In the old soul company of the stars.

The love of Earthmaker, our mother

Like every mother,

Is never less than a mountain.

The strength of every mother’s love

Contains the force of oceans,

The weight of seas,

The might of rivers in flash flood,

The depth of springs,

The quiet endlessness of acquifers beneath clashing tectonic plates.

This is love that outlasts death,

This is love with a geologic age,

This is love that embraces every child,

Found or lost

And takes the lost one, and holds him up to the stars

Where he will take his place among them.