The shaman elder in Greenland weeps and sings into his wind drum
as his Mother, the Big Ice, sacred site of millennia,
shrinks away to dwarf Her former self.
We sing, we cry for Her loss.
In Bangla Desh, rice farmers build their homes on stilts
to avoid the big floods, the rising salty brine
leaving the ancient nourishment of the rice fields
unfit to farm, cakes of salt where rich humus once was.
“We did not cause this!” cry the people, at the extremes of the world,
and at Her center.
But the cause is here, the origin right here,
a gigantic failure of imagination
causing nuclear reactors of eleven billion dollars each
to arise where we might be catching the wind,
where we could be reaching for the sun.
Fukushima’s lessons are set aside,
as if “it couldn’t happen here,”
forging on blindly in a way we know just doesn’t work.
The shaman elder in Greenland weeps and sings into his wind drum.
Here, right here, is where the beautiful world tilts toward meltdown,
here where our children too
will one day scratch the soil and weep,
where we’ve gone too far, where She turns her back and goes,
where this one precious Home shrugs us off like pests,
and turns Her face once again to the rich beauty
we have forgotten to see.
Annelinde Metzner
Fukushima Memorial
March 8, 2012
Listen to Annelinde in a reading of "Wind Drum:"
as his Mother, the Big Ice, sacred site of millennia,
shrinks away to dwarf Her former self.
We sing, we cry for Her loss.
In Bangla Desh, rice farmers build their homes on stilts
to avoid the big floods, the rising salty brine
leaving the ancient nourishment of the rice fields
unfit to farm, cakes of salt where rich humus once was.
“We did not cause this!” cry the people, at the extremes of the world,
and at Her center.
But the cause is here, the origin right here,
a gigantic failure of imagination
causing nuclear reactors of eleven billion dollars each
to arise where we might be catching the wind,
where we could be reaching for the sun.
Fukushima’s lessons are set aside,
as if “it couldn’t happen here,”
forging on blindly in a way we know just doesn’t work.
The shaman elder in Greenland weeps and sings into his wind drum.
Here, right here, is where the beautiful world tilts toward meltdown,
here where our children too
will one day scratch the soil and weep,
where we’ve gone too far, where She turns her back and goes,
where this one precious Home shrugs us off like pests,
and turns Her face once again to the rich beauty
we have forgotten to see.
Annelinde Metzner
Fukushima Memorial
March 8, 2012
Listen to Annelinde in a reading of "Wind Drum:"
Click here to hear and see the elder Angaangaq sing with his wind drum, accepting the wisdom of Mother Ocean beside the brilliant ice of Greenland.
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| Angaangaq singing into his wind drum. |
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| Glacier in Greenland |
Both are lovely, and sad...your poem, his song. Thank you.
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