The People Grew Corn Here

The People grew corn here / for a thousand years straight.

Positioned their fields / along the axis of humility.

Aligned with stars and the solstice suns.

Catching the monsoon rains: / not just water flows down the hillside, / but life-giving minerals as well.

Never exhausted the soil.

Our relatives of the First Light, / the people of the east coast, / dipped their hands into estuaries / and pulled out an oyster / for three thousand years straight.

These little oyster relatives, / tiny lungs of the water, / filtering the shorelines.

The white man came with his dredges and fences. / Now less than 1% of our famous oysters remain in the Chesapeake Bay.

The People of the Plains set gentle fire to the Earth each October. / Dead plant tissues transmuted into ash. / A holy offering / of phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium / to the / hungry soil.

Echinacea seed pods broken open by fire. / Germinating in these fertile, ashy soils. Nutrient dense grasses. / Munchies for the bison / sprang up / in the wake of / our gentle embers.

They thought we followed the buffalo. / Little did they know the buffalo / followed our life-giving prairie fires.

Our relatives way to the south / where the giant rivers flow / bring ash and bio fuel and termite piles and ceramics / into city wide composting systems / to transmute nutrient-poor Amazonian soils / into rich, dark Earth.

From these Indigenous systems 60% of global food sources were born. / The tomatoes of Italian pizzas. / The potatoes of French fries. / The cacao of Belgian chocolate. / The maize of southern corn bread.

Master geneticists diversifying varieties. / Master ecologists augmenting habitat. /

Master culinary artists sparking new proteins by blending juniper ash and bluecorn. /

Master hydrologists transforming deserts into gardens.

But all along the secret of our mastery / was to know we are not the masters / of the sacred Earth, / the deepest genius of these civilizations / not lying in their gadgets / but in their hearts.