EcoFaith leader Dick Harmon shared the poem below. Read Dick’s previously posted blog An Open Letter to Governor Kitzhaber here.
Join Dick and others at the monthly Grounding For Action:Beyond Fossil Fuels meeting on Thursday. September 11th, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m at Leaven Commons 5431 NE 20th Ave, Portland, OR 97211. At this Grounding for Action we will focus on supporting your recruitment work in your congregations and building momentum for the Sept 21 People’s Climate March in Portland. Come with a list of names of the people participating from your congregation! Find out more here.
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This Ambre Shot-Glass
We rose, we said no.
Yesterday, our state agreed:*
No to this ambre shot-glass of poison,
holocausting our river,
with all its swimmers, creepers, crawlers,
flyers, walkers, runners, all its lungs, livers, cycles,
each heartbeat, synapse charge, watt and photon,
all its molecules, mites and quarks, every cell,
microbe, groan, story and song; all its relatives.
What’s the source of this rising no?
Is no all there is?
What might river say on this small occasion?
Great family, our womb discerns, with us.
For my human cousins cusping recovery,
each of you is thirty trillion cells,
one hundred trillion microbes,
no telling how many quarks;
each held in womb, with all your relatives,
infused with spirit-flowing,
each of you in, awared to, breath, drum, story.
River says, slow down, consider:
all your relations, their cycles, systems, wonders.
Did you create any of these,
or their womb and work?
Who are you to toxicate, induce, indiffer
such ruin among all of us, all of yours?
Who are you to resist this gift, reject this yes?
This occasion tells me you are early in your turn,
wrestling your way to us, hurt, hearting toward hearth.
Wombed, we are here, with and within all of you,
without exception.
Welcomed, your turn now
for-giving self to self,
receiving common gift,
letting go of addict’s no,
opened to the bless of yes.
As for these amber shots:
declaring no to no unveils the yes.
For the organizing citizens of the Beyond Coal Coalition In Oregon and Washington.
*Oregon’s State Land Department, on August 18, denied a dock permit for Ambre Energy’s proposed coal terminal on the Columbia at Boardman, after over two years of large-scale citizen resistance.
Dick Harmon -8.19.14 Portland
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