The Roots of Music and the Wings of Foretelling
By Nancy Ashmead
Before human voices parsed and packaged
With words and labels and plastics
With scrawled letters and figures
Before the separation and supremacy
Shredded the deftly woven fabric
Of our embedded existence
We were Wind
The breath carrying all
hurtling waves, scuttling clouds,
Howling and whispering,
Wind sang its ancient hymn
through us and we knew it
as our own.
When, tempering night’s chill,
Its sparky, snappy song
Dissembling before our eyes
Even the strongest living tissue
Fire’s many tongues
Delivering delicious warmth,
Gave us a gathering place
To appreciate its splendor.
Creatures crawling, flying, leaping, nesting
Boughs and caves, nooks and notches
Tides and seasons, moons and mountains
Their voices intact, harmonizing in complexity
We were able to listen,
Though we did not know what we were
Some strange turning away did happen
Beginnings are all but invisible
Yet taking that step led onward
And so the two-leggeds began their harsh journey
Blinded, buffeted, butchered
Powerful and prideful, dissatisfied and insatiable
This creature lost the heart
Of the song.
No longer listening but noisy with
ears tuned only for its own invention,
Hypnotized, captivated,
Civilized and cultured
For all its magnificence,
The journey’s exorbitant tax,
Has shorn apart the waft from the weft
Forgotten landmarks, desecrated pools
Pits plunged mercilessly into bedrock,
Poisons injected in veins and rivers
The great grief weighs upon us
We can see now where the path has led
Though we ache to hear the song purely,
We’ve long forgotten how.
And those miraculous few who are able
Are swept aside by the lumbering giant
We keep feeding and enabling in our terror
And our ignorance.
There will come a time
When the giant takes its final step
And tumbles in a tumultuous fury
Cracking and seething,
in its demise
Perhaps after …
When we no longer believe in the deliverance
The giant promised,
When the ruined path left behind
No longer holds our rapture or hopes hostage
Perhaps when the language
Of the giant becomes meaningless to us
We may hear the Earth-song again
in its many, marvelous voices that do not envy,
or crave but simply proclaim their presence.
We may yet feel that vital breath,
Breathing us
Entirely
Beginnings are all but invisible,
And curses can be turned
With the power of a blessing
When it is the breath of something larger
Moving through your lungs.
May you and I listen beyond the gate of self-interest
Listen to the first music
And let it bless us and heal us
Allowing a new relationship to
Emerge and bloom
(Images:A painting by Hildegard, One of my own called Land & Sky, A painting by Carl Jung, me & Cedar Grandmother Tree)
