things to remember as this world dies
A poem by Chris Taylor
you did not come here to pay bills and die. nor to line the pockets of those destroying the Earth. Imagine instead that you came to gather precious things fallen from the pockets of Ancient Ones as they fled the desert’s march - each a reminder of something they pledged never to forget. Things like how to call birds by name with your whistle. which news to tell the bees and which to share only with the moon. how to tell a parliament from a conspiracy a colony from a convocation. Things like nature has no race or nation, class or creed except when humans seek to deceive - division designed to sever you from kith and kin and buddha-mind. Things like the antidote to oppression is not freedom but belonging the opposite of domination is communion. the medicine you need is always outside your door and there’s likely a wise woman two streets away to show you how to use it. These things were left to help us remember how each world before has ended and how each death became a door to new life and how this world wants to take you in her arms and make of you a lover and have you listen to the land talk to the stream find meaning in the silence of trees and wisdom on the singing breeze. Listen awhile to discover the right season for all ten thousand things the ninety-nine names we use for our own divinity how to share power so it can never be captured by the vain and greedy how to step into the flow of life and make of the Earth a common treasury for all beings how to map the stars learn the lesson of each constellation and still know there is more in heaven and earth than any of us was ever meant to know. So fill your pockets as this world dies knowing some of it will guide you to the next and some will fall to the ground in time to be found by those who’ll bring the world back to life.
Chris Taylor lives at Canon Frome Court organic farm-community where he's learning the arts of composting, orchard care and communal living. He’s a writer, tai chi practitioner and facilitator of transformative processes for activists. Chris has been published in Kosmos Magazine in the US and Permaculture Magazine in the UK. He’s author of The Tao of Revolution and is finalising his first Thrutopian novel, provisionally titled The Road to Ynys Mon. He posts sporadically on Facebook and Substack.
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I like to credit the inspiration for this poem to indigenous poet Joy Harjo. I had just finished reading her collection “A Map to the Next World” when I wrote this. I was wondering what an indigenous British version of her poetry might read like and this is what came.
Here's wisdom. Double heart.