A couple of days ago, I read Winter Rabbit’s DK post titled, Cops-Commit-Cultural-Genocide-Cutting-up-Sweat-Lodge about the destruction of a sweat lodge in the area where the Line 3 Oil Pipeline is being protested. It seemed to me to be just another unnecessary act of inhumanity among so many that keep piling up and up…. Anyway, it bothered me and I wrote this somewhat tangential poem...
Another sacred sweat lodge was destroyed
By the guardians of the dying black snake
Who reveled in a bit more destruction
Thinking
Hah,
This time
The People will give up
And allow another gaping wound in the land
Where the greedy owners of last century's
Obsolete technology
Desire to lay more miles of oil pipe –
The People will endure and resist
And live past these corporations and their minions
Who walk such corrupted paths of being.
Forty years ago, I went through
A sweat lodge ritual
How I got there, in what forest?
Such details have vanished from my memory
Like rain drops on a lake,
I have only within me
Glimpses of a structure
And a circle of faces
Of steam and heat
Of silence and singing
And the coolness of outside air
And the thought that came
After the dawn of a new day
That I was a better man.
Four decades have gone by
And the world is darker than ever,
I am just wondering
Great Spirit,
Or,
If I may use the terms of my own path,
Dear Director of the Kal forces on this planet,
I know we must be tested
With intense steam and heat
To make clear our path,
Open our minds
And let soul connect with you,
But I was wondering if we could
Enter a time
Where we stop crushing people
And injuring the land and seas
And give up the enslavement of each other
And instead have tests
Of healing,
Of learning new ways
That are common grounded
And meeting the challenge
Of a global paradise,
That is adventuring to live in
And travel through space...
Or is this your plan now?
Carl Scott Harker ©2021
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My latest collection of poetry — poems written between late April to Late October, 2020, is now available and you can find it on Amazon here: Above Us Only Sky.
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