A summer snowfall of white feathers
A dragon sleeping on a perfect square of suburb
A cloudlike portal to a parallel mythic realm above heaven,
Such were the ponderings of the weekend Gardener,
The Divinely appointed caretaker of this tiny speck of soil,
As she first spotted, while walking home from her office job,
The mystery, the creature overspreading
Half the grass leading up to her yellow-painted,
Picket-fenced so ordinary house.
What could it be?
It was, in the Gardener’s eyes, so immense with its wings spread
Appearing several times its actual size due to its creation
Of a protective realm of sovereignty around itself
Maybe an ancient shapeshifting fantasy
So out of place
She thought
In her own homely and unconsecrated place and time.
It was a hawk who rose from the grass and beneath,
In its claws, a squirrel struggled.
The Gardener witnessed the small being’s last few breaths
While captive high above the Garden
She had made in her backyard of fragrant herbs and flowers for smelling,
Berries and nuts for feasting, soft beds of leaves for sleeping
To entice through the gate
Squirrels and chipmunks and woodchucks.
Now thirty feet in the air and soaring to the west
The hawk and its prey disappeared in the pastel blue sky.
What the Gardener calls her Garden was once covered by glaciers
Which receded, leaving an Arctic tundra
That warmed and, at least 10,000 years ago,
According to artifacts still emerging at just the right moment
To tell the stories that need to be heard,
Humans set their feet upon the ground to dwell,
To live, to be birthed and give birth, to make stories and sing, and to die.
First the land was hunted and fished
Just enough to feed the First People who lived here.
Then it was ripped open by European plows
And planted with only apple trees, the animals, birds, insects, grasses
Shut out by wire and wood fence, poisons and grasping tools.
Finally, a century ago, after the house was built,
The land was lovingly cultivated by
Generations of women who each made it her own vision of paradise.
The last in this line of women, the Gardener,
Envisions the land to be a calm, peaceful, lovely place
That embraces neither the fierce, majesty of the hawk
Nor the violent death of the squirrel.
I am the Spirit of this land, Holder of both the Gardener’s everyday realm
And the almost infinitely complex world of the Garden’s
Real nature and all the beings who live in it
From bacteria to humans, from fern spores to maple trees three feet in diameter, from sparrows to owls.
Propelled by the sight of the hawk and squirrel
Into an instant of understanding that the Garden was not only
What she had created and conceived it to be
But also a place much more than she could imagine
And all she had ever desired,
I levitated the Gardener’s soul into the air
And she saw her Garden with the eyes of the hawk.
She witnessed, in her orderly beds,
The native and storebought flowers and herbs planted by her own hand.
And, amongst them, with wild abundance,
More species than are known to human science
Grown from seeds dropped from traveling birds or on the breeze
Snakelike runners under the ground, roots burrowed deep in the soil
Coming to life now that they are welcome.
Woodchucks, foxes and cubs, squirrels, chipmunks, coyotes, and
Millions of dragonflies, butterflies, mosquitoes, grubs, ladybugs
Billions of one celled beings that are part of the
Massive ecosystems that are plants and animals.
All connected to hundreds or thousands of other beings by chemical communication
By sound, taste, smell, and instinct and intuition.
By my Spirit.
The taking of the squirrel was just one of millions of interactions
Exchanges of life and death that happen everyday so that
The entire web may exist in balance and well being.
Birth, growth, life, and decay, the dance that enlivens the universe
Within that one-eighth acre landscape.
She closed her eyes and began to truly listen
To the cacophony of all the beings in that small area of ground
Each with its own voice and its own rhythm
Seemingly, each struggling to make itself heard
Amongst the chaos of so many other beings.
But then she listened even more deeply
A united song began to emerge
That of the Spirit of the Land itself.
My Voice.
All the rhythms and melodies of all the beings
As well as the soil, air, sun, and water that call the Land home
Emerged into one rhythm and melody.
“I can hear it!” the Gardener exclaimed,
“With my own ears, I can hear it!”
She had heard it every day since she had moved into the house
But never perceived it because
She had been taught that no realm existed
In the world of daily human life
Where such a song could make galaxies far away reverberate.
Then she heard her own voice
And it was clearly a part of this symphony
An essential element of the music and without it
The Land’s song would be not just different
But incomplete, not fully alive.
She began to sing with her throat
So anyone walking down the sidewalk
On their way home from work or school could hear.
She sang to the land, sang to it a love song and a lullaby
A chant of praise and thanksgiving.
She told the Land of her longing to be part of its true being for so long
And all the while she had never been apart from it.
The Land, My voice, listened and responded,
altering its song to harmonize even more closely with hers.
At that moment she knew what the Spirit of the Land was,
Who I was.
I am the relationship between all the living beings,
I am that eternal aspect of them all, including the Gardener,
That exists beyond physical birth, life, and death.
I am the web that connects all.
And so the Gardener came to know what I had sent the hawk to tell her.
She is never alone in her garden or anywhere else on Earth.
So many times she had come instinctively to the Garden
When in mourning, in depression, when feeling all was lost.
Even without being able to speak it, she had always known that
In that place she is of a loving, vital community
That is as real as the bond which connects the hawk and the squirrel.
She plants the herbs, she eat the herbs
She nourishes the trees with water and compost
That shade her in summer and delight her eyes and soul in winter.
The Land gives back to her physical life
But also the very Divinity that makes life meaningful and real.
She is the Gardener, but also the Healer,
She began singing to the Land
Every morning. Embracing me with her voice.
Her voice which is also My Voice.
She blames herself for how generations before her
Laid waste to the Land,
Believing that she will be the last generation to feel the gentle sun on her skin,
Taste the sweetness of the Earth’s bounty, run against the gravity that connects
Her flesh to the soil and might of the ground.
But I know her spirit is true, she and all those of her time have been born to
Sing their place among all beings to make the Earth whole again,
Even if only one small patch at a time.
With the power and sureness of the hawk and
The industry and perseverance of the squirrel
They will do what they must do. They will sing with their voices,
Their actions, their determination and their passion
So that life will continue.
And never again will they believe they are alone for they will
Always and forever sing with Me the Song
That We have sung in all times so that there will Always be a Forever.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Carolyn Lee Boyd