POETRY and WRITING from Broken Forests

 

In Resilience

I am the land of fullness breathing, in my core all realms turn resilient.  Whether with a giggle or a squeal the appeal from my soul announces a reincarnation.

Dancing, with heartrending moves, then revolving and meandering…      Dancing and stirring in tune…                                                                                            Dancing and expecting for the beat.

Supernatural bloom, look deep inside, somewhere in there a new seed is sprouting.                                                                                                                                            This fruit, with free hands and arms, will flow and hover… far away!                    But today… no place is remote enough.

Dancing with arms, wings and fins…                                                                            Dancing or flowing, or, hovering in tune…                                                                  Dancing and torquing the hips with the beat.

The new life is coming giggling, twittering, and bobbling full of presence and with its own empire.                                                                                                                  Going everywhere with the illusion of finding the love that changes worlds and gives life to hope.

Dancing with feathers, flapping or simply flowing by the wind.                    Dancing with energy that manoeuvres the tune.                                                  Dancing to endure our souls to the beat.

We are soon at the existence of glory, the light that resists and the social presence letting us love.                                                                                                                  A day that wobbles to the tune of love and a day when we converse about the mysteries of joy.

© Written by: Cesar Forero                   Proofread: Eileen Egerer

 

 

META MORPHOSE

Wrapped in lonely cocoons                our actions and attitudes are dormant

and can be brought to life                   be triggered by actions

in the environment.

Wasps make their nests in my studio       and when they fall I photograph them,

interfere and honour by adding some fine drawing lines.

Even though they are delicate lines,  they represent the strength and resilience

of the threads of the spider’s web.

As part of the planet’s natural life 

the bees and wasps work contributes significantly

to the overall aspects of life through pollination.

As human bees and wasps,                   we can make pollination with our art.

Through artistic and poetic images

we can inspire people to rise as chrysalides

and leave their cocoons             to integrate and engage with the external world

and fight against forest devastation;              always protecting our sacred sites.

As artists we can also raise awareness          inviting people to create networks.

Part of our project is to help people believe        how important it is to preserve

and protect the sacred,

and to reconnect with all natural life in the world.

– Norma Vieira, 2019

Antidote

Have I ever returned from a walk in the wild feeling less healthy  than when I left my sordid, civilized society?

How do the rustling leaves, fetid earth, clarifying air and occasional smears of dew alter my functioning flesh and body?

The relationship between our selves and our surroundings must be integral to achieving a balanced physical health.

 

When we walk together or alone,

Leaving doubt and mistrust at home,

Through majestic darkly wooded shade

Or moss-carpeted fern draped glade,

We are inhaling and swimming through

Bacterium, bacilli, mystical spore slough.

 

This liquid, mercurial, microbial field

That courses through all and all will heal,

That invigorates, evacuates the foreign threats

To our inner gut fighting immuno-florets.

The inside system that most replenishes

From wilderness walks, but never admonishes

My stumbling step, breath, touch and feeling.

Because here new immunities are annealing.

 

From the stretches and stresses of

Hiking, walking, laying on dirt,

Slipping, grasping, staying alert,

Performing outdoor meditations herein,

We are gleaning unknowable medicine.

 

And that is why, when I return,

Turn the corner far astern,

From a walk or a hike or climb or swim

In a cold water northern lake, my skin,

Feels stronger, and my body more akin.

 

As an antidote to global pandemical unrest

I will take a walk and solemnly ingest…

The healing feeling alchemy of the broken forest.

 

– Tom Red, March, 2020

Humus Spiral

the brown spiral radiates from roots deep in the earth.   it contains the cycle from decay and humid death to germination and seedling emergence…to sapling suppleness and the smell of rapid, powerful growth…to blazing flower and blossom and beautious expression…to hoary age whose bark and boles tell tales of struggle and weathering the machinations of legged species…to the lightning strike or fiery surf that crash down upon leaf and limb…to the sculpted snag all blanched by sun that claws the skies for ages indeterminate…to the fallen giant asleep in mossy eiderdown…to the mound of rotting insect hovel labyrinth…and back to fetid dirt and humid life…

tomred, 2019

As a poet of the historic consciousness I suppose I am bound to see landscape as a field dominated by the human wish — tortured into farms and hamlets, ploughed into cities. A landscape scribbled with the signatures of men (sic) and epochs. Now, however, I am beginning to believe that the wish is inherited from the site: that man (sic) depends for the future of the will upon his location in place, tenant of fruitful acres or a perverted wood.

Lawrence Durrell, 1961