The Burning of Sacred Heart

We name our honored spaces

for who they tell us, walks there.

Here is Tecumseh’s Forest;

there is the Cathedral of Notre Dame;

here is angry Pele reminding us

we are not the owners

of the land. If you want the right

to change every moving part

of an entire living planet, you

accept also the mantle of

the steward. You are the servant,

not the master. Soul comes to

present itself in sacred places

only where we make the

effort to make space

for the sacred. We knew how

in the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

 

Have we lost our identity

as protectors? Does the center

still hold? We are burning it all:

The mangroves of Sumatra and the

oaks of las Sierra de las Minas.

What is left of Damascus.

The Great Barrier Reef. Your local

park. Notre Dame. The liquid story

of dinosaurs captured forever

in shale and peat, until we

came along. The new plan to

erase the Cradle of Civilization

and the birthplace of modern

agriculture. The polar circles and

the interior of every continent,

starting in Melbourne. A million

species that seem to have gotten

in the way of the industrial revolution.

 

All across your land and mine,

the spirits are exiting. Some quietly,

the breath of a spring that no longer

knows how to be gentle; some in

conflagrations that defy our ability

to assimilate their loss. It is the

American Way to talk of rebuilt places

and, especially things. Our optimism:

it will all work out in the end.

 

But will it, really? Who among us

can rebuild an ice shelf? Who

remembers the sacred code

of quietude, contemplation

and service

that called the Holy Mother to

lift the veil between earth and spirit

and tell Parisian’s ancestors,

“if you build here, I will grace

your sky with a greater beauty than

your walls and windows and spires?”

Who among the greedy

and powerful

still recognizes the value

of the world’s irreplaceable things?

Author's Note

photo is mine, of a forest fire in front of my home, this March

translated from my original, written in Spanish

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

I was not aware of a new plan to erase the Cradle of Civilization.

[Raquelita]

120,000 planned troops to Iran and the Middle East. Yay us.

[Raquelita]

thanks for reading!