Bone breaks, blood spills.
The dark cry of the world goes up, a column of smoke.
Bullets. Women weep with their dead in their arms.
The oceans also hold dead children,
coral reefs like whitewashed tombstones
and whales no longer singing.
The land perishes beneath our feet,
harvests soon to vanish.
Machines grind away, never stopping.

There is no night here. The lights are always on.
We’ve forgotten that darkness
is the womb from which we’re born.
And as false suns blaze in urban sprawl,
our mothers turn restlessly in their beds.
For they know the signs of the times,
and their anxiety seeps into their dreams.

Fate spins her wheel,
holding the threads of our lives ever so gently,
and the cycles of time turn once more
so that the tomb we’ve built
will become the womb
from which a new dawn springs.

We will be fewer, but braver.
We will be smaller, no giants of technological advance.
We will learn to live again when the lights go out.
Until then, fear not.

Though the mountains blaze,
though rivers dry up,
though trees are cut down,
the Earth is no enemy of ours.
By fire and pestilence,
by famine and flood,
She will teach us,
and she will heal us.
Death and darkness belong to Her,
to the Great Mother of us all.
Fear not, for nothing is ever lost.
She keeps all our bones,
and she holds all our memory.
“Take my hand,” She says,
“And I will make all things new.”