from Clarissa Pinkola Estes When Evergreens Walked the Earth

Dear Brave Souls:

WHEN EVERGREENS WALKED THE EARTH

I think we are
like Scots Pines
Green and beautiful
cones of perfect
spiral labyrinths.

But then
the wither sets in,
the long needles
wave making a scratch
sound, only
dry and dead
can make.

Then skaggy
looking,
frowsy,
thinspy,
shed wrecked,
saggy socked,
soup too cold.

But/ and
then
bright
green
new
candles
again.
Then green
lush
cones
again.

Who
is to say,
and I mean
no disrespect,
that
we are not
the green Cristi
who was once
a majestic
evergreen tree
who lived,
died,
came back
from the dead.

And somewhere
in the BC times
or shortly thereafter
some forgot
tree and Being
were one...
and separated them
as the Being
dying
on the tree.
And the tree
not returning
to Life
and all exhorted
to wait til the Being
returned
perhaps yet
some thousands
of years
hence.

And who is to say
we cannot remember
how it once was
and understand
the radiant lesson
again,
and not
be waiting
and waiting
and being good
waiting
for the 'return,'
but daily
nightly
being,
being,
Being
in full creative spirit,
Being The Return.

This comes with love and hopes that you will remember what I call the 'night between two days' does not last, but passes. That it is not the life/death cycle. It is the Life/Death/Life cycle. Truly. In many many forms. To each her own. To each his own. As each sees fit, as each finds their own ways,
Dr.E.

CODA This poem was written in the 1960s when I was wondering about those in history, often dictators, kings, queens, 'royalty', clergy, war mongers, greed masters who had tried to take from all our native heritages-- that iridescent idea: that is, the reality that Creator and all of Creation are One, instead saying only this one side, ever separated from all of Creation, all of Nature---

and attempting to convince, punish, shriek, shame, cajole,condemn, all into not seeing the Unity that brings New Life every every every day and night. In cycles. Life/death/life, as I would write many years later.

Too back in the early 60s when I was a teenager, I saw, I thought, that this separation of most Radiant Being from all of Radiant Creation was then used as reason by far too many to slaughter more humans, animals, make clear rivers into filth flowing, pour mine tailings, poisons, sewage into the waters that nourished the animals and birds and fish, and without regard for estuaries or homelands for animals,

began plating over the earth, clear cutting her trees and clearing her natural grains and grasses, and laying down eyeless and earless brick armor across the land so the soil could not breath, and with smokestacks galore, neither could the humans breathe clear and clean.

Im of a mind still. The same. Some things remain the same as the angels whispered to us when we were helplessly listening as teens, to everything that was love....

image: wikimediacommons, public domain