Braiding Sweetgrass

our time long after our delusions of separateness have relegated us
to the fossil record, a ruffled green skin adorning the crumbling
halls of power.
Rock tripe, oak leaf lichen, navel lichen. I’m told that Umbilicaria
is known in Asia by another name: the ear of the stone. In this
almost silent place I imagine them listening. To the wind, to a
hermit thrush, to thunder. To our wildly growing hunger. Ear of
stone, will you hear our anguish when we understand what we have
done? The harsh postglacial world in which you began may well
become our own unless we listen to the wisdom carried in the
mutualistic marriage of your bodies. Redemption lives in knowing
that you might also hear our hymns of joy when we too marry
ourselves to the earth.