I was thinking the other day about the Badlands being appointed as reservation land, and how the tribes were sent there to reside because the place appeared devoid of most discernible life and was therefore deemed suitably worthless.  Traditionally sacred and suited to prayer and meditation, those rocks were not sites  for the bodily sustenance of plenty.  So the indigenous people across the continents were corralled onto infertile lands, assuring the demoralization of lost self-sufficiency and subsequent dependence upon provisions of flour, pork, rum, cloth, and so forth.  Hunger in the belly the rule, starvation of the spirit nearly unavoidable.

So I guess now we’re all in that same boat.  Plant-life relentlessly paved over by perversions of stone, our food ungrown, reliant upon the system that grinds our souls and bones.  Grim, yes.  And yet, here it is almost spring again.  Increasingly life a miracle of existence, the cycles support us despite all.  Just imagine if we helped it along, to flee the reservation seed by seed.

I wrote a bit of verse:

 

 

Could’ve been better, but altogether is

worse for following years

forward marched machinations

displacing dancers displeased

flows stop and moved beside

what no longer reckons growth

hemming lives short

askew in rock-strewn rains

stark cliffs and structures remain

unheeded faces set astray

still

hands could pray

supplicants reaching underneath

turn up soil, staunch wounds and

clear each darkened day