Orenda

Great Tree of Peace, Adirondacks

Beauty, these days,

has become elusive.

You look at the picture of

aspens printing yellow hands

on dark snow-capped pines

and think nothing but the headlines—

the thoughts, the thoughts,

the thoughts without power.

The shapes no longer move you;

the stories are leverage

to define your image to the crowd.

No wonder your dreaming is 
as distant, as erratic as your pulse.

What would your ancestors say?

They were tired, too, back when

they had but one choice at a time

hanging there smooth before them.

Perhaps their lives depended on

seeing every shift of the wind,

but even so, only some
sat at the foot of ancient council trees

and saw

the other world.

So it's likely that they,

even now, 
are carrying you with compassion

to that hidden spring between the cliffs

they too got lost on,

letting down your broken body

into the healing water 
that moves like a song.

You must let beauty come back to you.

Seep into your wounds and

into your marrow again;

be the word that makes you clean,

that lifts you into its current

so that you're always traveling together,

keeping watch while the other sleeps.

Oh how it still loves you,

even as you lay there half-dead,

undreaming,

having gorged yourself on all

that promises and numbs.

It never stops its search party,

never hesitates to scale the walls of the fort,

break down the great dark door

and spirit you out of your opulent dungeon.

It lives for the moment

you feel its love again,

when you open the gifts

it's saved up for you

all these wandering years.