There is More than One Diaspora

There is more than one diaspora on this planet,
More than one people who want their homeland back
With guaranteed return passage to their heritage
To restore what once was stolen and never lent:
The land that gives them shape, where ancestors speak in trees.
There is more than one sage of old, ancient Moshes and Siegfrieds
Or great grandmothers in solitary huts beside the sea,
And others in their forests leaning on their knees,
Remembering prophecies of sacred soul relationships,
Reaching along paths of peace.

This is their song:
My hair is flying in the wind
Full of sparks and flames
Razor shreds of lightning flashing in the sun’s heat
Showering every shadow with revealing light.
For I am a wild horse
Snorting through unkempt forests and apple trees
Prancing out onto battlefields with harp and song
Laying down arms by the glow of my ancestors’ hearts
Flush to my skin and in my voice.
My hair has grown children of songs and circles
My silver hair has gardened all my heirs and grandmothers
My hallowed hair has gone from whispers to shouts
Against all blandness, and in canyon winds,
Mountain winds, meadow winds, desert winds,
Ocean winds, river winds, winds of red spires,
Winds of thundering trees, snow winds and icey fingernails
Scratching along icebergs, wind to wind to wind:
My hair has become the earth the stars the moon
My hair has weeping of children and elders’ stories
My hair has howling of wolves and waterfalls
My hair has cumulus clouds before rain
My hair has the patter of mice in summertime
Hiding in stalks of wild corn
Where in its shade is heard the sharpening of the scythe,
For a thousand thousand harvests and firelights
Glisten in my hair where colors dazzle the flanks of trout.
Come, dive into my hair of blue mud for scrying
And fly in the wind and sing the eternal chants.
My hair and my heart are fragrant with fire of roses in the wind,
The dense smell of a spice market on Iona among the sheep.
I am the wind.  Did I tell you?
Blowing sparks over the landscape.
Did I tell you?  And my teeth
Are rockets of words
Singing on the ocean floor where luminescent night creatures
Pulse into existence and pulse out,
Delicate threads of antique forms
Yet to be known, and this my teeth are singing
My tongue licking the salt and waves and sail winds
North winds, west winds, south winds, east winds, trade winds,
Catching the breeze wind that fans my hair into
Long long long ribbons upon the rolling sea,
Swimming in front of the eye of a whale.
I am the eye of the whale.  Are you seen?
And my sonorous humming
Is in the waves.
I am the waves.
Swim in me.
My hair is the waves and the wind and the whale.
I am the quite ordinary human heart
Beating deep, deep, deeper than before
Reaching back, back, back farther than before
Into the soil,
Every day birthing again the vital earth.

Copyright © 2012 James Lower