The forest and rivers have been calling with their energies of renewal and abundance. The rivers are rushing high and fast from late winter rains, urging us to shake off the winter hibernation and get moving. The leaflets and blossoms are popping on trees, and wildflowers are starting to bloom in rotation. I’ve been feeling the call to be outside, getting in a hike every weekend. Last weekend I was called to McDonald forest. It is managed for recreation with plenty of hiking trails, and also for logging by Oregon State University’s school of Forestry.  I came across a patch of forest that had been marked for logging. The ones to be cut were marked with pink paint and flagging tape. I stood awhile in their midst, just being with them, acknowledging their lives, their gift and their Spirits. I was called to leave packets of MariEL energy for whatever was needed in the area.  They gifted me poetry. I translated the best I could.
 
Ode to those who will be lumber
 
Heartfelt gratitude for you, noble trees and your dryad kin
For all the oxygen you’ve birthed and carbon dioxide transmuted
And the hillsides you’ve stabilized, anchored and rooted
with dirt made from the organic bones of your ancestors
 
For birds you’ve nurtured, squirrels you’ve fed
The shade you’ve given and dancing shadows cast
Your root-cabled forest internet of messages passed
Through the underground cities of microbes beneath you
 
For the rain drops you’ve caught and the mist you’ve hugged
For releasing pollens and seeds on the breezes well flown
Now surrounded by children you birthed, the Elementals you’ve known
For all the stars you witnessed born and dying in the night sky
 
For the Sacred prayers you heard and poems you inspired
For all the homes you’ve been and the homes that you will become
stacked at sawmills and stores when the harvest is done
Already I miss your wildness
 

A tending of the waters are needed inside and out
Acknowledgement of the blushing fluids for the rising tide
Of blood cells and cytoplasm in the mechanics of a drawn breath
The salty release of a single tear
The perspiring of a sacred communal sweat
 
We are more water inside our skin than any other element
Yet we hardly ever thank the water for our humid breath
or cleansing sweat and tears
Or realize that this powerful elemental undine force lives within us
 
Oh Mother of the waters
I am so grateful for all of you that I take in
and for all of you that I let out
My life depends on your purity and abundance
 
Please forgive me for the way I have disrespected you with leaky faucets
and green lawns in the desert
The way I have profaned you with oil leaks and non-biodegradable laundry soap
How I have wounded you with plastic bags used once and thrown away, never connecting them to the manufactured tiny beads washing up on your shores and in the stomachs of your whales and pelicans
 
Please forgive me for taking for granted ice cubes, hot showers and car washes
And for fearing your abundance as your unrelenting floodwaters sweep away everything in your path
I apologize for calling you polluted when your purity is so deep in the spiritual dimensions that I cannot even comprehend it
 
In the hottest of days when I enter the coldest of your streams
our waters mingle, and I am renewed
I return to you in my dreams and spiritworld journeys again and again
communing with you in all your forms as if I am embracing a lost part of myself
I honor you with humble and steadfast love, and vow to see you as pure, perfect, pristine, life-giving and full of lifeforce and majesty
 
I honor you with gratefulness
I fill my heart with love for you
Send blessings to you every day
And recognize you as the powerful elemental being you are
   – Mother of the Waters

The hidden jewel of the North Fork of the Santiam River, near Opal Creek, Marion County, Oregon

I wrote this poem last year but was called to revise it after the holy experience of communing with the river this summer.