by Kate Hedlund
This is a song for El Mirage
This is a song of great emotion
This is a song of deep sorrow
This is a song of lasting hope
This is a song of peace
This is song for the girl in the green sweater
The Iraqi girl, who visits me in my dreams:
The child who told me as I was praying in the desert
That she could not hold on much longer.
This is a song for the Joshua Trees of Shadow Mountain,
Who have seen bombers and satellites and missiles
Scar their starred night sky: the trees who watched us sleep
And whispered: we've been waiting for you.
This is a song for Edwards Air force Base
Whose "High-tech planes and missiles from stateside bases
can hit targets in any part of the world with devastating force."
And who claims "The threat of a global attack
is the type of power needed to maintain peace and keep adversaries
from venturing beyond their borders." (1)
This is a song for a small round planet,
A borderless planet, a water planet, a living planet
Where threats and attacks and billion dollar budgets can never create
The peace of a single desert wren calling out at first light.
This is a song for Desert View Correctional Facilities
Because as long as my brothers and sisters
Remain in bondage,
I can not be free.
This is a song for the powder blue lichen
Spattered across rocks at the edge of a Dry Lake
Like the tiny woodland violets of my home.
This is a song for Meadowbrook Dairy
Where 1900 hoofed ones live and die surrounded by equipment
Powered by their own manure(2), and by the forgetting
That cows too are sacred.
This is a song of two women
In a dry stream bed, with hands raised at dawn
Praying for rain, in a circle completed by Invisible Ones
This is my love song for El Mirage
This is my love song for the girl in the green sweater
This is my love song for the Joshua Trees
This is my love song for Earth Mother
This is my love song for my heart's ancestors
This is my love song for the Northeastern Spoke
This is my love song to you. |
