After Reading Momaday

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by Jay Paul

"There is no better blessing than to be believed in. There are those who believe the earth is dead. They are deceived. The earth is alive, and it is possessed of spirit."   — N. Scott Momaday

 

Who in their right mind

cannot hear the vibratory life

in minerals, in what is so

often reduced to mere "resources"?

We need to be careful with our names.

We need to court gentleness with our names.

Of course, we don't name a world

simply into being.

But our names so easily can cover

not only the world, but the worlds of worlds.

When this happens, so many worlds

can be simply snuffed out.

The world is not too much with us.

It's too much of us.

Even the dirt beneath a sidewalk

contains particles and particles of microplastic.

I can sense them there, 15 feet away,

where I can see the sidewalk itself.

To name without care is to poison.

To name without gentleness is toxic.

The voices of the grass and minerals,

from gold to agate to natural gas,

come in languages far foreign to us.

But much can be learned from attending

to the music of a foreign tongue,

its tones and cadences, its rhythms and rushes.

What does a veined green leaf say to you?

What might a mown grass blade

be saying to its fellow? A little understanding

is enough. It's enough to tell us

the ten generations of industrial civilization

is next to nothing, and its careless

attitudes, its irreverence, its blindness and deafness,

are the most maladaptive posture

imaginable, when considering the long run.

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