Some plants, like dandelions, scattered their seeds in the wind, while others, like some pines, needed fire to open their cones. Somehow, the Mother knew to dry her seeds almost completely so they would sleep until the time was right to wake. Each seed held a trace of life that would spark when given water, when given the appropriate conditions.
—Diane Wilson (Dakota), The Seed Keeper
What can emerge when we listen—to each other, to the world around us?
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial justice awakening of 2020, we began to wonder what our world would look like… after. How does upheaval shape our communities, and how can we plant the seeds for a better tomorrow?
Thirty-two visionaries, artists, and activists came together for a series of intimate conversations, reaching across cultural divides and systemic inequities to reflect on a world turned upside down.
The rich wisdom in each conversation was distilled into a poem. The resulting 14 poems became the foundation for participatory incantations: in-person gatherings that gave voice to the poems, weaving them with music, place, imagery, and movement. These gatherings created a community space for healing and for imagining the world we wish to see.
The following are a selection of those poems. If possible, read them aloud, ideally with a partner, friend, a child. Feel the syllables resonating around you, reaching forth to reseed on new ground. Ask yourself:
What is your Seed Syllable?
What is your hope for a time beyond your own?
Dedication:
To the seeding of these syllables: may they crack open to new horizons.
To the land, the seeds, the water, the sky, the wind, and to all the more than human.
To Aaron Stern, who had the visionary impulse to make a telephone call during the height of the pandemic with a provocative question and the gift of trust.
To Elder Kathy Sanchez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Dr. Ana Malinallix, Sharon Day (Ojibwee), and Seitu Jones for their blessings.
And to all the incredible participants who joined us on this exploratory journey.
Sanjit Sethi Minnesota
Roger Montoya New Mexico
Jamie Blosser New Mexico
Vanessa Whang California
Adelina Anthony California
Sage Crump Louisiana
Nuttapol Ma New Mexico
Nick Sile Louisiana
Linda Parris-Bailey Tennessee
Nobuko Miyamoto California
Daryl Lucero New Mexico
Carlton Turner Mississippi
Michelle Otero New Mexico
Carmen Morgan California
Sunny Dooley New Mexico
Sharon Day Minnesota
Dipankar Mukherjee Minnesota
Arlene Goldbard New Mexico
Shelle Sanchez New Mexico
Brandi Turner Mississippi
Yoko Inoue New York
Seitu Jones Minnesota
Estevan Rael Gálvez New Mexico
Diane Roberts Quebec
Michael Lopez New Mexico
Ismail Khalidi Chile
Chris Creighton-Kelly British Columbia
France Trépanier British Columbia
Alicia Inez Guzmán New Mexico
Haili‘ōpua Baker Hawai‘i
Jamie Figueroa Ontario
Sharon Bridgforth California
Chrissie Orr New Mexico
Meena Natarajan Minnesota
Memory
Nick Slie and Nuttaphol Ma
What are we Seeding
Arlene Goldbard and Dipankar Mukherjee
Seeds
Sage Crump and Adelina Anthony
This may be the last time you see me
Seitu Jones and Yoko Inoue
Look through the Mountain
Estevan Rael-Gálvez and Diane Roberts
Love Transcends
Sharon Day and Sunny Dooley
To Live into the Distance
Michael Lopez and Ismail Khalidi
The Quiet Revolution
Roger Montoya and Sanjit Sethi
Vanessa Whang and Jamie Blosser
Coming Back to the Land
Alicia Inez Guzmán and Haili‘ōpua Baker
Dream this World into Being
Chris Creighton-Kelly and France Trépanier
Something Cracked Open
Shelle Sanchez and Brandi Turner
Song of our Hearts
Jamie Figueroa and Sharon Bridgforth
Could
Miyamoto and Linda Parris-Bailey
Nick Slie and Nuttaphol Ma
Four worlds searching
Memory
Memory is a place of nothing and everything
Nothing and everything
At seven years old
Leaving behind tangled roots
To arrive at difference
Harsh words fly like daggers
Go back go back
Go back go back
Go back home
Belonging disappears
Longing, arrival, departure
Like ringing notes
That cannot be heard
This haunted place
A foundation of ashes
Waters break loose past tears
Exorcizing the cries
Of those who came before
Sun sky water
Pulling that speckle of light to this dark place
Unacknowledged grief, death
So many
So many
All we are given is this day
So clear our eyes
Shed those tears
Shed those tears
Tears
The sutures have opened
Can we stitch our way out, our way out
Slow down the spirit
To see what is beyond
A grandfather’s camp
A mother’s recipe
A forgotten land
Greet the ancestors
As they have prepared outposts for us
Take courage, row that canoe
Walk those untrodden paths
As the stories of sorrow are a portal
Remembrances
Celebrate them
Nothing and everything
Nothing and everything
Remembrances
Celebrate them
Nothing and everything
Nothing and everything
Nothing and everything
Arlene Goldbard and Dipankar Mukherjee
What are we seeding in these seeding times as we dare to uncover oppressed voices
Uncovering to discover
We know less than we believe To swim in the realm of the unknown, questioning everything
Unclear how to move
Through shock and heartbreak
The losses of truth sight lines disappearing in normalized disrespect
Do not forget Do not forget
Do not forget
Do not forget
People killing people destroying the world around
Stepping over the bodies of decay
Some choose not to see
Some choose not to hear the cries of death, the hurt, the children in cages
Knee on neck, six-foot man’s face crushed into the asphalt
Mother, mother
Mother, mother
No breath, no life
Heartbreak, hearts broken
Engrained stories that repeat Encoded in every molecule
Speak out
Speak out
Blinders block the truth of what is the certainty of the other permeating, shimmering grasping to clear the way to stride out of the old order
Circumcise your heart
Remove the tough outer coating so that truth and love can seep in
Unmute ourselves
Sound the chord, inscribe trampled words
Drawing the line
Unmute
Unmute
What will we seed to grow in a new direction
Where there is an exhaling
Where everyone is breathing
To banish the sharp threads of steel
Fire and molten lead
To reach sunsets over green prairies
To bathe in beauty
Walk on dry leaves with the sound of the wind
Do not forget
Even if we fall
Traces of the struggle will remain
What are we willing to risk so we can all find a piece of bread To fall in love to see the variance of light to open the capacity of hope to begin the journey
Is hope the point of arrival instead of the ticket
Now is the moment
To provoke seed syllables Syllables form words Words grow into sentences Sentences into thoughts Create a new language Back to essence An oath, a declaration Speak out, spit out Spit out
That hard unvarnished truth Release those sounds Poetry arising
To seed To seed
All stories from all times surround us
Like a cloud of a billion iridescent butterflies
Like a cloud of a billion iridescent butterflies
Sage Crump and Adelina Anthony
Four beings speak of seeds
A metaphor for all peoples
One seed sown on a field in Texas
Another planted on a porch in Virginia
One Bija in India, a seed In Scotland
Listening to the birds in our gardens
Speaking of mother’s coyote medicine
Learning from ancestors and our children
Experiencing profound joy
Bucked up against intense grief
This moment of evolution in humanity
With its jumps and bumps
This time with its dangers and opportunities
Asking what would you risk
What would you risk
What would you risk
To bury your dead
To look deeply
Into people’s eyes again
Finding new ways of being together
Sowing seeds of collective consciousness
106 names before bedtime
Kept in the mouth
A mantra before sleep
Keeping us safe
Three more names to the litany
From this confluence
Creating an intentional practice of connecting
through spirit, wave and time
This pandemic happened
George Floyd happened
Hundreds and thousands of spirits
Locked down
Not given the proper rites and rituals
To move on
Dying alone
Dying alone
Alone
Grief
Grief
More grief
Is it even possible to imagine
A world without prisons
Without a cost of being “woke”
A sense of liberation
That is no longer at the expense
Of black bodies
We will crumble again
Unless we eradicate this
Dying alone
Alone alone
This is a time of reckoning
A time of crossroads
Lifting veils to a new reality
Generations are going to look back and ask
“What did you do”
“What did you think”
Something about this evolutionary moment
screaming for connective tissue with each other with nature with spirit
Inviting us to look in new ways
Every action has a ripple effect
Constrictions can create expanse
We are our own little universe
All seeds have value even if not all seeds are planted
They are lifeforce
Life force
They are lifeforce
This time
Another seed of change of transformation
Of radical re-envisioning
Of putting our hands in the dirt
Caring for baby trees
Layers being made visible
Revealing new culture
Creating new contexts
Moving beyond binaries
A spectrum of options
Finding ways to believe again
Passing through our hearts
Opening up to grief, beauty, justice
“What do we put down”
“What do we pick up”
“What do we put down”
“What do we pick up”
Lessons learned and offered To the world
Where tenderness becomes a practice
Ancestors being born into ancestors
Carrying knowledge to the other side
Storing seeds for the future
Four beings talk of seeds
Xicana, Black, Brown and White
Offering gratitude
For bringing us together on this journey
All seeds have value even if not all seeds are planted
All seeds have value even if not all seeds are planted
Even if not all seeds are planted
Seitu Jones and Yoko Inoue
Be not ashamed to sing those notes of love
To embrace the unconditional
A beloved love
Holding true to care to welcome those whose homeland is afar
As this may be the last time you see me
Liberation, can this be so
Running away from those institutions
Like escaped slaves
Brown, Black, black and brown
Bonding beyond ourselves
Locked down locked tight
Clenching fists to what is not yours
I can’t breathe I can’t breathe
The flesh scarred pain, the agony set free eliminating our innocence
The enduring hangover of these times these times
as this might be the last time you see me as this might be the last time the last time
Unleashed released the eternal suffering to shift our desperate worlds
As normal was not so normal distress stagnating the body to smother what little patience was left
Moments of mourning
Mourning
As grief strides to the forefront
She crossed the road and got hit by a car
A Mother’s death
So many names to be uttered out loud
etched into our tongues
Traversing violent passages
Without the touch without a tender declaration
Lost departed vanished to no return
Be present but stay at a distance
Be here
See me as I am
As this might be the last time
The last time
The last time
See me
Different ways of being
Clash full on
Rattling pushing
Until the voice grows stronger
No longer tolerating
No longer compromising
No longer keeping silent
Embody kindness to heal broken hearts
Nourishing compost renews the body
Stirring out the tension, aggression, the desperation
Taking stock of all beings
Cutting out the white noise
Pause and silence
To walk the field with no paved paths
And not return
The wake, awake to the resilience it takes to see between the shadows
Of what we will leave behind
To be aware of who we really are as this might be the last time you see me
Through the difference together we come
Summoning forth that unbounded love
So we will see each other
Again, again
And again and forever after
Again, again
And again and forever after
Estevan Rael-Gálvez and Diane Roberts
It was Grandmother that showed me
How to look through the mountain
Seeing the people passing through
Pulling back layered stories
Revealing the joy, pain and trauma
The resilience of our Ancestors
The sheep herders, the ditch-diggers, the enslaved the teachers, the black caribe
The small village peoples who cared for the land
Who taught us to use words as a way in and a way out
Taking our tiny hands rubbing them on the rough grains of the house
This is who we are
This is where we belong
Came then the pandemics
knee on the neck murder, I cannot breathe
Fire, unrest, the necessary uprising all so close
what will the Ancestors say to this cracking open when we are afraid to look at one another
We might catch the unknown, perish as with the others
Smile hidden beneath the mask
Take one step in front of the other as if it matters
Sucking renewed air into the lungs
Slow down slow down
As waves of exhaustion engulf from afar the ever-present churning of fear brings us to our knees
the sharp rocks of time digging deep awake to the tiny beauty of uncertainty
It’s a gift
the ebb and flow
the battle is raging while seeds are gently placed in the earth
Can we bury our dead yet
The damage, the whipped grief of black and brown racism
The shame, hatred, rest and get ready for the long haul.
Let’s open up the stories to invite another
Place clear water in a bowl
A candle to light our way
Listen, breathe to liberate what has been shrouded
The continual thread, the continual thread rest and get ready for the long haul
Sharon Day and Sunny Dooley
Indigenous people are here today because our ancestors loved us
We are here today
We are here today
We survived against all odds
500 years of warfare
50 million people from the Arctic to the Tierra Del Fuego
Whole tribes wiped out when the Spanish brought swine to Florida carrying diseases we had no immunity to And yet, we’ve survived
We have survived
Relatives across Turtle Island
Nagaamoo Ma’ingen, Singing Wolf from the Wahbazhezhi Clan
One of seventeen
Born in a log cabin with no electricity
Left home at fifteen Lesbian, Queer, out since the 80’s Way before it was cool to be out
Nihókáá Diiyiin Diné Tódik’ozhi Asdáán nishlį’
Reflections in the fall of my life
Living in a valley of pine trees
Walking toward the last 42 years of life
My father, who gave away his earthly possessions at 82
He packed a small handbag to accompany his final journey at 97
A mother, a weaver, herbalist and rancher who looked at me with earth eyes on her deathbed and asked, “Do you have everything you need to live”
I answered, “I found the underwire bra’s I liked”
I want to live as they did
I am Diné Hozhojii Hané teller
The first one to speak my stories in Diné
Eternal stories held in families
Never shared with outsiders
Speaking my truth
This Covid time has revealed a lot of truths
The truth - I am comfortable that I am solitary
The truth - tips of pinyon branches have nourished me
The truth - there is no time to waste
The truth - we must be the heart of our earth
My grandmother lived to be 85
She never left northern Minnesota until we moved to St. Paul
Only liked to speak Ojibwe
She saw so much tragedy in her life but did not become that tragedy
She became grace
I aspire to be like my grandmother
We can be angry about the injustice in the world
But we cannot let that become us
We’ve got to hold on to that hope, that love
You know, we have seven values
That’s what makes us Ojibwe
If the rest of the country sneezes, in Indian country we get pneumonia
We have lost our elders
This virus is a protein
Protein has a spirit, and we need to address that spirit
We need to ask it to go to the far outer limits of the universe or to the depths of the ocean to leave us alone
The virus has a spirit, everything has a spirit
We address this in so many of our ceremonies
We call those spirits to join us from the four directions the earth, the sky and ancestors
Starting on a full moon
I collect a branch of a sapling
an eagle feather
28 tobacco ties
Get up before sunrise and meditate
All across the country
people growing food
Blueberries, herbs, squash, wild rice
Put your hands into the earth
Be in nature
Grounded in solace
Reconnect to the earth
The anxiety melting away
Sharing food
Think about the ancestors yet to come
Be in heart
For ourselves
For the earth
Every word a prayer
Indigenous people are here today
because our ancestors loved us
Love transcends time
We survived not because our ancestors were downtrodden
We survived because when they picked that blueberry
And tasted that strawberry, they felt joy
That’s what we have to do today
Ask our ancestors for help
Remember they thought about us
They thought about us and sent that love forward
That’s what we have to do today
Love transcends time
Love transcends time
Michael Lopez and Ismail Khalidi
Unfurling the times
thread by thread
Syllable by resonating syllable the words an incantation unraveling to live into the distance
Did we ever imagine the relevance of pivot points
The balancing acts the leaping compass needle twisting this way and that as solidity shifts and shakes apart
Sinking into the upturned ways
Challenging our presence
Wondering who we now are
Leaning into what we do not want to see
The privilege of severing the roots
Waving to the homeland
Scattering ourselves far and wide
So far from family to wonder why
A wake-up call to precarious ways of unsustainability
To live into the distance
To live into the distance
Loneliness, alone
Navigating the knotted tensions arising from timeless quarantine
Four peeling walls restraining inwards
So lonely, very lonely with only the abandoned self to look at
Stripped down to the bone
No excuses
Not anymore
Deciding what is important
Choosing now
The pregnant partner
The cooking for a daughter
Slicing through the top layers to sort through the sensations of tending to another way
Not to be pulled by the faraway dream of unrealized desires
Hunkering down to come back to the essence
Turning the story inside out to loosen the constancy of honesty and solidarity
The beauty of caring for others
To live for the common good
Not to let the hyper-capitalists smother us again
White supremacy, blind colonialism, capitalism
racial systems that benefit the few
Let them rise to the surface
Rise to the Surface
Uncovered, revealing the ingrained lies
Giving up what we thought was true to bear witness to all that has been conditioned out of us
Grappling to see into the distance
Where we can manifest the solidarity
Where alchemical gold is in the reach of all
Can we do this
Can we do this
Can we measure ourselves to listen in and see again
Retrieving the remedy to counter the misinformation
To bring back the lifeblood of connection
That sensitivity, the father daughter love
The concern for those in far off places so we can see again into the distance
To step out on the other side dressed in the handspun cloak of truth and dignity for more than just ourselves
To see into the distance
Into the distance
Roger Montoya and Sanjit Sethi
In a garden, a courtyard
A living room
A car stuck, running late
Checkerboard faces
screened side by side
Trying to feel the pulse
A resonating longing for stillness
Simple is not possible
Take a breath
Take a breath
A breath
Expanding, releasing
Moving together as we can to bring us to a different place
Incubation
Inside the cocoon
but the pressure of grief hammers down
Scratching to get out
Splitting open the shell
Unfolding light from darkness
Turning over what we knew existed
Underneath the oppressive tidal currents
Pulling from the depths what we have forgotten
To breathe, to exhale
To breathe, breathe
Breathe
Loosening our tongues to utter fearless syllables
Forming the speech to become truth tellers
In languages shaped by the grace of mothers
Evolve, revolve, Revolution, the quiet revolution
The quiet revolution
Lifting the clouded veil to reveal the bold mark of inequity so we can see those who have been kept in the shadows
Witness the vulnerable Witness
Open wide the doors, remove the barriers move over to make room for that former drug addict the homeless women the unwanted children
Holding space in the dignity of intimate revolution
Not the disruptive explosion but the repeating of evolutionary steps to come into our rightful selves
As I exist because you exist I am because we are I am because we are
The dancer running for office
The leader expressing anxiety
Coming out, to come out telling all that has been held tight spilling raw histories
laying them on the table
Opening the heart to vulnerable recalibration so the world can seem different
Washing in freshness a new day might come
Looking to the horizon
Holding a handmade bowl rich with nourishment
Passing to another we briefly touch hands
Soft stirrings soak our skin
flooding open this moment
To breath together the collective breath
Take a breath
Take a breath
Aspire, inspire
Take a breath and breathe out the quiet revolution to stand with another’s truth
Hold that moment in those entwined hands and move forward
Move forward together
Move forward together
Vanessa Whang and Jamie Blosser
These times
In the stirring times
A confluence of four winged women reveal points of connection
Rising with tender breath
Circling in feathered laughter through water, sun, stars, air
Let us not go back inside
These inside outside spells
peeling away the layers
Holding the silvered mirror up
Back up back up
Slow down
Pause and pause again
To see again
To See Again
No place to hide from the truth of ourselves
Ragged cobwebs swept clean no corner left, no leaf unturned
The splintering of buckled armor
Scratching through the mottled surface
undoing what has been done to reveal the lightness
There’s no going back inside again
It’s time to notice
It’s time to notice
Sink into uncomfortable moments
Search through the chaotic rubble of injustice to find our tender truth
As there is no going back
No going back
Outstretched feathered wings
Release the smothered song
Resonating sounds vibrate
as they stir our hearts to free the oppression
The waters of power are muddied
flowing wherever they want to go taking us along making us complicit
until we flap wildly in the dirt
To surface with the truth chords in our mouths
To do the right thing
To manifest rightful beauty
To care for the other
To feel the other
To listen in
To fly with the thrill of difference
Feeling warmth from the undiscovered flickers of golden light
Together holding
Inside outside
Tread lightly as the gift is there to be found
hidden in the sadness
buried in the pain
forgotten in the silencing
Care, joy
The other side of the broken heart
Inside outside upside down
Four winged women preen their feathers
As they circle aloft
to break apart the mold
Spreading unfettered laughter beyond the times
As there is no going back
No going back
Alicia Inez Guzmán and Haili‘ōpua Baker
The passage to forgetting what has come before cuts through the bedrock
spilling blood lines on stolen ground
Spilling blood lines on stolen ground
Seeing land as an ancestor
It is who we are
It is who we are
Who we are
The mountains embrace a tiny northern village down south, Mexico, father’s birthplace
Deportation, losing all
Orphans in the making North and south vibrate
Shaking loose the grains of grief
Piko knotted to these islands who sing the song of generations
Speak the words of truth
Mother and mother’s mother
Kanaka Maoli
Querencia
Albannaich
Thamizhargal
Orient to these sounds
This place is who we are
Stealing the lands from underneath our naked feet
Crushing cultures to get to higher ground
Get out the way
Get out the way
Out of the Way
Dislocation upends our ways of being
Severing histories
Hanging by a thread
Hanging by a thread
Lost
We lose
Colonization makes you forget
Forget
Forget
Forgotten
Concealing memories in our bodies
Feeling the trouble in our bones
Displacement is entrenched inside of us
People arrive on our shores surround our mountains drinking up the remnants of what we had
They took it, threw it away and want it back again
Thoughtless vacation vacant, emptiness
As thousands upon thousands are dying
Lamenting dark clouds shift and reshape
Take care of your family
Take care of your home
Care for more than you
Watch that hummingbird
Sit under a tree
Rest for a second
Rest for a second
But do not forget these complicated paths
Remember the gifts
Mo‘olelo
Mo‘okū‘auhau
Hana no‘eau
‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i
Aina
To bring us back
To stand firm
Tierra
Tierra madre
Untether the mantles of patriarchy
The culture of the colonizer
No more
No more
Become the truth teller
Holding multiple ways in our hearts
To thrive in collective acceptance of the stories we are meant to forget
Holding the hands of the ancestors
Holding the hands of our granddaughters
We part the mist with primordial tongue
revealing traces of ancient story
Decoding the fragments
To write ourselves back into the land
To come back into the land
Back into the Land
Into the land
Into into
The land
Tierra, ‘Āina, Nilam, Tir
Chris Creighton-Kelly and France Trépanier
Listen to the land
Listen to the ancestors
Listen, listen
Listen in
As this is the homeland for many
For others home is far away
Another soil, another mother
Listen to those who come to the land
In a different way
Listen to those who come to the land
In a different way
In a different way
We, refugees, immigrants and those from the diaspora
Walk on the tracks of people who lived here before
We are all part of the great river of humanity
Blur the lines
Outside the lines
In the between space
Reconnect with the motherland
Circular, cyclical
Past seven generations
Future seven generations
Time
Circular
Cyclical
Where the past and the future entwine
Always locating ourselves
Listen
Listen in
Do we know how
Do we know how
Whether we have been here
10,000 years or 10 years or 10 days
We are all standing, living, sleeping On somebody’s traditional territory
Remember generations and generations have nurtured relationships with their land unleashing meanings
Of Land, Time, Memory
Memory, Land, Time, Culture, Art
If Kathak stops here it will still go on in India if Taiko stops, it survives but if Powwows cease there will be no more Powwows in the world
Listen
Listen deeply
Listen
Listen deeply
Time is about remembering
Remembering the planet
Remembering the elders who have passed
Their stories, languages, cultures
Remembering the land
Remembering us who we are
and who is incarnated through us
Locating ourselves in a cycle
Letting go of control
We can’t control the river
But our paddles can bring the canoe to shore to where the light shines rather than tipping over into chaos Or paddling backwards
Explore the light coming in Are we going to scurry in fear back into darkness
Seek not so much the light but the darkness that goes with that radiance to find the light for us to understand who we are
We are cooked
The planet is cooked
So step outside of this time that’s been imposed on us
For a moment, a glimpse our connection to land can begin here
This land, this mythic space, this cosmology
The homeland for so many Who came before us
Strip away what we do not need
Land matters
Light matters
Beauty matters
The granddaughter matters
The seven generations matter
(Oh yeah, mortgages matter too)
Rest in these times
Witness the beauty
Listen to the polyvocality
Of a circle, a society, a country, a planet
Everyone has a story
A Position
A Dream
We need a radical re-imagining
That shifts binaries
Identities and imagined solidarities
creating not one movement
But an amalgam of movements
Go into the dream world
Reconnect
To the temporal, temporary serenity
That comes from the land
Dream this world into being
Dream
Dream this world into being Dream this world into being
Look at that flower
To the third eye of the universe to be lost in time
Listen
Listen in
Shelle Sanchez and Brandi Turner
Weaving fine threads of collaboration and gratitude
Sitting with knowledge that the creativity we hold The stories we tell The relationships we make How we hold each other are not separate from how we move through life
These women from the north and the global south Inspire expire
Inspire Breathe Through the gaps
Something cracks open
Something cracks open
Open
Open
Cooking is my artform creating community breaking bread together
Sitting together as stories rise to the surface seeding what might come next How do we connect How do we connect
Connect deeply
The last few years did not bring anything new for my people
people that look like me Now, the veils are off The veils are off
How do you look beyond the surface
White, raising two black sons
I’ve always been an incurable optimist
Something about this year slapped me in the face chipped away at the incurable Cracked open this door to my life to talk about racism
Cluelessness
Ignorance
The labor of black friends
Does it take these moments to realize
How much change is needed
How much change is needed
Something has cracked open
Something has cracked open
My whole being has cracked open from the pain and the grief
It is real that it took a plague to open people’s eyes
to see a connection to everybody in the world at the same time
We’re all carrying carrying this experience
Globally
Generationally
Connectivity is a beautiful place
Moving past the separation
Connectivity is a beautiful place
The black son, optimistic hopeful despite his experiences
The protests someone shot
Conversations of difference
People coming together
Holding space
Seeing glimmers of hope and joy
Change
This beauty, does it arise with the sun
This beauty, does it arise with the sun
Taking the noise out of our heads finding the balance to stay in the struggle
Not to be drained
Rejuvenation
Rejuvenation
Our replenishing replenishing
Which we need to continue
To continue
Revealing the gifts of being in the light
Being present
Caring conversations
That love you feel rippling from the words bringing tears to our eyes to stop and give thanks
This is what it is
This is why we’re alive
This is what it is
This is why we’re alive
If I could leave something behind it would be the social construct of race
Can we also do gender inequity while we’re at it
Lets go lightly
Lets go lightly
And let’s say yes, I’m down
Let’s say yes, I’m down I’m down
Yes, something has cracked
Cracked open
Jamie Figueroa and Sharon Bridgforth
This time
Time time
A time of arrival
Writing to fill the blanks
Left by the absence of memory
This time
Armor broken
Coming in and out of protection
Portals opening
So much feels possible
Floodgates releasing breath
Held for a long time
Gasping for air
To cry and cry and cry away
The shock of what we endure
This time
This time of duality
Holding the chorus of opposites
Devastated
Terrified
Rageful in disbelief
To gratitude
Rootedness
Awareness
It’s possible to feel all of this
To feel
To feel in a day
Within a single hour
In these times
These times
Can we just be together
Just be together
Be together
To find each other through our silences
Listening with our inner ear
Seeing with our inner eye
To know the other
Call out to our wild twin
Who is longing for us
This invitation
To be ourselves
To not hate ourselves
As people sacrificed, people died
People made choices that got us here
This time
Of intuitive knowing
Riding the horse
Letting go of the reins
Holding on with our legs
And knowing where to go
How do we go to a place
Deep within the heart
Drawing from wisdom we have
To this place of our knowing
The song of our hearts
Radiating into the song of the planet
It’s the force of life living herself
This time of tender tenderness
Peeling away the layers
To get to the joy, the laughter
To be safe in our sweet hearts
Be tended by spirit
Though our own ethereal bodies
Remembering our ancestors
Learning to love ourselves
In spite of our past
To keep the birds singing
The sound of the song
The song of our hearts
In these times
In these times
Nobuko Miyamoto and Linda Parris-Bailey
Could this be a time when change can happen
This moment has revealed what was always there
A deeply rooted ideology
A selective truth, consciously created
Another season of loss of denial and defiance
History repeats itself
This shadow began eons ago
Residing In the moments before this time
Stark, repetitive
Greed looming like a dark cloud
Grasping to hold on to 10,000 acres of land that was not meant to be owned
This worldwide war on information
People listen to what they want to hear
Believing that they have a right to do whatever they want
Listen to their own spectrum of news
The deep roots of racism
selling the notion that change is loss
Could this a time when change could happen
We need a non-dualistic approach
Find a way to communicate
Through denial and defiance
Find that hurt part underneath
If you’re isolated, we are isolated
Break through it, break through it
Could this be a time that change could happen
Can this be a time
It’s not like racism is going to end
There was a time we thought revolution was going to happen
We could not have had a black president
until it was in the imagination of the people
That real buoyant joy that we felt
We don’t want to be satisfied with anything less
Spiraling, coming back to a similar junction time and again
When we meet in that space again
Will we be further along as human beings
Will our knowledge of history help us learn from the past
Will we learn from our art, from the uprising in the streets
Can we glean hope and courage from these moments
We don’t hear it all, we don’t know it all
A different kind of consciousness rising from our experience of fighting for justice
Learning from each other, being with each other
Amplifying voices, building solidarity
Listening to our children
How do we transform our anger to love
How can we transform our love into action
Stories of Japanese grandparents in internment camps
Black mothers who found themselves at age 107
Voices rising from the silence
“I have been quiet all these years, I’m going to finish”
Sometimes that voice is like thunder
Or it’s as simple as a gentle story
I remember
We remember
We have work still to do
We’re here for a reason
Friends for a reason
We have stories to tell and stories to listen to
We are called to witness
We are connected
Our lives are interconnected
There’s backlash in every moment
Our job is to keep stepping forward
It’s not easy being young right now
It’s not easy being human right now
Could this be a time when change could happen
Could this be a time
