We drank the boiled herbs, thanked plants
and everything that passed near them,
as they grew,
the birds who flew above them
casting shadows across leaves,
bees with golden legs,
the rain clouds, and even the ants sucking nectar to open
the first buds, and Old Mother spoke
about the budding of plants ceremony,
then she took me to the other plants
in an ancient canyon growing,
changing with the forces of life,
wind and rain; the rock people there.
It was August during the time of stars falling
through the darkness of sky. We sat below
this grandmother tree, shaped by the wind.
I was young, knowing the plants would be my life
and they are. Even then
I heard the voice of that tree
and the green constellation of the others,
how they needed one another to call
the good bacteria from far away, birds to eat the insects, these messengers
to one another of harm, of changes to earth.
They are the remedies. They are our elders. They are our roots,
all at work.
Then we went to the humans, the ailing,
first the room with three beds, pink and painted
with flowers. Old Spanish, she told me, of the family
of two old sisters and a brother waiting for the herbs
she carried in bags, the people anxious for medicines. The next day
the elders lined up with their canes
and thick glasses, stories of what had gone wrong,
the maladies and pain that betakes the old bodies. My heart listened
as I heard the list of ills and what it is to age
and now I have done it, too. Tonight, in August, under the sky,
of falling lights that never touch down,
I remember all the people,
what were their hopes
their youthful dreams, what did they all believe
and what inside them might have broken,
I still love them all, my heart goes out,
knowing how our lives turn on any unknown
edge of change.
Ask me now about the plants and I’ll say
I still know nothing, not in all this time.
I am not anyone
who opened in the best of light or darkest earth,
but how I did try to fly, a mere seed in the green world
and when I leaped,
like a falling star
I landed in an unknown place
touching down to a life still
growing, moving, still learning the angles of light,
the new tilt of earth,
grateful for each leaf I have almost fully met,
each one knowing more than the accumulated knowledge
of our human world
always still so in need of healing.