My antennae sweep and scan
for reception, for a portal
in perception, for a porous
passage to a green breathing
land where every presence
offers itself to be known,
where everything speaks,
even galaxies, even stone,
where interspecies
lovetalk leaps like
flashing fish and flying
dragons in blue-pooled
dream canyons, where poems
sprout from cracked bark
of sequoia and oak, and
madcap music mushrooms
from decay and darkness.
Sometimes human beings listen,
ears tilting in a creaturely way,
tuned to something not entirely
audible though there is no barrier
to reception, and through
this listening we might remember
how to live, hearing the old
voice that still bells forth
from the primal body
who birthed us all,
the old voice reverberating
along tendrils of mycelia
that entwine the human psyche
with the mother tree:
living psyche of Earth.
It’s not a far country or fictional
galaxy, but an unfiltered mode
of consciousness with no screen
to block or deaden the Others
and their always-streaming voices,
their ancient kinships, star-studded
extravaganzas, where even human
beings might harmonize their wildly
necessary sound. I have sojourned
plenty in that stone-talking terrain
but lost the way of return
busy as I was with all varieties
of civilized absurdity,
forgetting I even had
antennae, formed long
before we became human.
But here: a passageway
opens on the mossy edge
of imagination. Shadows
illustrate the way, flicker
and hum their own language.
Praise the revived antennae
and sing with the Others now:
cackling trills, creaking
dreams, moon swoons, rough
poems sprouting from
portals in perception.
- Geneen Marie Haugen