Lake Cuyamaca below Stonewall Mine, San Diego County, May 2023 ©2023
Learning from the trees
Whose network underground
Nurtures and attends
To each other old and young,
I awoke in the dark hours
Sensing the turmoil,
The felling crashes of fellows
Who had stood so long as standards
Now given to sawmills and dust.
Whose network underground
Nurtures and attends
To each other old and young,
I awoke in the dark hours
Sensing the turmoil,
The felling crashes of fellows
Who had stood so long as standards
Now given to sawmills and dust.
First impulse to thrash
And protest helplessly
Fretting against the nightmare,
But knowing the Will beyond us
I remembered the light in my veins
And my turn to send strength
Through the roots joining below
With the others passing it along
In sustenance for all to live
Regardless of the yelling motors
Chewing centuries of forest
Families asunder.
And protest helplessly
Fretting against the nightmare,
But knowing the Will beyond us
I remembered the light in my veins
And my turn to send strength
Through the roots joining below
With the others passing it along
In sustenance for all to live
Regardless of the yelling motors
Chewing centuries of forest
Families asunder.
The light given before time
Multiplying storehouses of good
Ready for us to finally sprout,
Grow strong toward the sun,
This light still generates
Within our digging deep
Joining with one another
Assuming abundance flowing
Generously giving and receiving
From day above
Into cells digesting,
Lowering light into the ground
Gifting our own and all
Who move under our swaying,
Rocking in the breath from above.
Multiplying storehouses of good
Ready for us to finally sprout,
Grow strong toward the sun,
This light still generates
Within our digging deep
Joining with one another
Assuming abundance flowing
Generously giving and receiving
From day above
Into cells digesting,
Lowering light into the ground
Gifting our own and all
Who move under our swaying,
Rocking in the breath from above.
Thus was my watch in the night
Again holding faith
Despite meanness and strife unmaking
Eons of growth and breathing,
My turn to exert light through the veins
To the wounds healing,
Believing the source sends enough
To sprout again as the saws fail
And the darkness quenches not the light.
Again holding faith
Despite meanness and strife unmaking
Eons of growth and breathing,
My turn to exert light through the veins
To the wounds healing,
Believing the source sends enough
To sprout again as the saws fail
And the darkness quenches not the light.
Mark R. Turner
April 28, 2025
Athens House
April 28, 2025
Athens House
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