Wind

A note showed up via the cloud, "wind" was its subject. The message

i am glad you got out from under the tree just in time for the wind tonight. stay safe.

Sal wrote back, "Thank you for your concern, and affirmation for the move!"

Sam has been readying the homestead cleaning things that might be thrown about when the winds come through. Sal said a prayer to the forest and the trees asking for protection, and giving thanks for everything they are all the time ... big wind, small wind, no wind.

The golden wagon is leveled on blocks so Sam and Sal walk a steadier pace across the small aisle delineated by throw rugs and old favorite blanket; a few steps from door to bed. Adjusting to the small and powerful move from the woods, the two old dears are being fed a new mentorship with a woman named Aurora. It is very likely much of what Sal is learning will appear in this medicine.

This woman Aurora is a woman born from the Caribbean, a Puerto Rican-Jewish woman. As Haiti reels from the devastation of big wind, this poem serves as tether of solidarity worthy of the power of connection, voice, women, and concern.

V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales

Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning
and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:
Another world is possible.
 
Thus spoke the prophet Roque Dalton:
All together they have more death than we,
but all together, we have more life than they. 
There is more bloody death in their hands
than we could ever wield, unless
we lay down our souls to become them,
and then we will lose everything.  So instead,
 
imagine winning.  This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and the woman
wrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.
 
Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child.
It is your child.
Defend it as if it were your lover.
It is your lover.
 
When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.  
 
Imagine rape is unimaginable. Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor
That the crimes of our age, the grotesque inhumanities of greed,
the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it, the vast fortunes
made by stealing lives, the horrible normalcy it came to have,
is unimaginable to our heirs, the generations of the free.
 
Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing.  Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.
 
Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children’s children
may live
 
This poem is here with the permission of the author, Aurora Levins Morales with the promise that this link appears to take you to her blog. Mahalo nui loa Aurora Levins Morales for your inspiration, your voice.