Fertile Resistance

In these troubled times we are living in, my faith lies here, on the edge of the field, where the spirit of the wild is still bursting from the fecund edges...those fertile swaths of resistance, the feral bursts of color and vibrant life emerging from the ditches. Just beyond the Milpa field, a tangle of corn and beans and squash and tomatillos and melons, I hear the enduring song of the deeply wise and resilient native plants who defy the imperial straight and measured rows, the constraints of so many adversities delivered at the hand of colonization and capitalism.

I turn to the east, to the headwaters of Clear Creek here, where the old ones tended Spirit Rock, ground medicines, and split acorns open, and babies were born on this sacred cradle of granite. Their songs still echo here; the land misses their voices, the timbre of the Nisenan language.

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This creative Indigenous essence of this land cannot be extinguished. She rises, sprouts, unfurls, stretches, a celebratory bursting from the seams of wild Mariposa lily, St John's wort, elderberry, milkweed, soaproot, Ceonothus, grindelia, yerba santa and more.... where She sings her seedsong of reclamation, redemption, reconciliation, Rematriation... the restoration of a valiant interdependent way of living where Her glory can celebrated, honored, revered, respected for the Lifegiving sustenance the land so generously offers all.

As I sit here kneeling down, inhaling her fragrance, with knees that bend in hopes to give more than I take.

I remember this; I, too, have those wildflowers bursting from the edges inside the earth of my own body. The latent wildness of my ancestors, whose song would not be silenced against all odds.

These vestiges of a deep remembrance of our Indigenous vitality still sprouting from deep inside myself, like dormant seeds tucked there for safekeeping until the time was just right.

You too have them, inside the earth that is your own body. When you feel the rage and sadness of the injustices we see happening all around us, water these wild seeds inside yourself..the ones who make beauty out of the chaos, the ones who emerge to sing a song of fertile resistance.

Let us make this grief an altar to lay down our most treasured medicines to soothe those weary of the unspeakable atrocities.

Only She, the Earth that is our Mother, can gather these pains, tears, these screams still stuck in our throats and, with her holy hungry million mouths, turn this despair into rich soil from which will sprout the possibilities of renewal and dignified resurgence—a landscape full of raucous vines of exquisite foods that will feed our senses and put us back together again.

We lay these griefs at your feet.

Grandmother granite, grant us the strength, the courage to remember.

Lend us your mineral memory.

To birth worlds that we remember forward.

I read this poem as a part of a “Writing the Wild” Reading Potluck tonight. I am thankful to be a part of the “Writing the Wild” Cohort.