We live in loneliness
Anger, laughter, fear, love
We all have loss
We all seek redemption.
Upon these commonalities
Stories are built.
Strong foundations.
Because life as a human
Is also about what we share.
We need this sharing
To feel the same,
To remember that we belong,
To eliminate the loneliness.
Life has been on earth for five billion years.
We’ve seen five mass extinctions. We’re currently undergoing the sixth,.
There have been many geological and biological factors for the extinctions. The famous meteor impact. Volcanic activity. Thriving plants altering the chemistry of the atmosphere. Imbalanced ocean water.
Have you ever looked up a video of the tectonic plates shifting? Landasses are just the dried pudding skin on top of a swirling hot ball of magma. Watch them float and mash into each other. https://youtu.be/IlnwyAbczog
I looked at Google maps today and zoomed out until I could see the earth as a globe. The land masses still look like liquid. They’re clearly made of a slow-flowing substance. Look at the tip of Africa. It’s crumpled.
How small we are. We run and scream and fret about the mess we’ve made of things. What absurd hubris. We aren’t the first and we won’t be the last. And unless something integral about us changes, we certainly will not survive as a species beyond another few hundred thousand years.
Only one thing is for sure: the algae always wins.
An iridescent spider weaves a web
Her whole body moves like a single hand
Knotting lace.
Pull, stretch, dip, next
Pull, stretch, dip, next.
My friend prepares dinner
Slicing grape tomatoes
Graceful and relaxed at her kitchen counter.
Set, slice, bowl, next
Set, slice, bowl, next.
My sister crochets a hat
Curled on the couch on a cold winter day,
Listening to a movie while her hands work.
Loop, hook, pull, next
Loop, hook, pull, next.
I enter data
At work wearing headphones
Music distracting my mind from my hands.
Check, copy, paste, next
Check, copy, paste, next.
Repetitive motions get us through our days.
Work is work, everywhere you look.
The rhythms and pulses of life don’t change.
And they are the same
For every creature.
Sweet wood child
Faery of running sap and cattail wisps
Imperceptible
To the coarser senses
Sing to me, elemental imp
Tickle my ears
With your light lays
Weave a spell of woodcraft
Quicken the arbor above
Caress my languishing spirit
In green delight.
Your melody seizes my soul
Unveiling before me
Every sylvan splendor.
Life is full of gains and losses.
We live, we love, we lose,
We find new loves to lose.
Sometimes we pull away from them,
Sometimes they pull away from us.
People ebb and flow
In and out of my life.
I want to keep all of them
Forever in my arms
But I can only hold
This many
Off the ground at once.
And if someone struggles to be put down
It wouldn’t be loving
To refuse them.
Sarah D. Silvey 