Grieving for the World

 

Please, try to understand if you see me hugging a tree, my cheek pressed against its bark, my eyes cast up the trunk into its lush, green leaves. Don’t be alarmed if you catch me, hands pressed together in prayer, whispering to the deer standing a few yards away with sunlight on her back. And if you find me hiding behind a gravestone at dusk in the cold of winter as I wait for the red fox to pass by, please, don’t be afraid. I am only grieving for the world.

 

Once I dreamed I was lying on a beach as the tide was coming in. Lying on my back, I could hear the tide crashing against the sand, the sea gulls screaming above me, the smell of brine filling my nose. I had been longing for the ocean and she was coming for me. In deep desire, I lay perfectly still. Then, wave by wave, the ocean swept over and eventually covered me. And when I opened my dream eyes, I saw blues and greens with glints of gold sunlight swishing above me as I was lovingly carried away to a watery heaven.

 

The Earth is my lover; she is all I want.

She invites me to lie in her green pastures.

She leads me beside her still waters.

She and her creatures restore my soul when I am engulfed by the grief of life on this planet,

blooming in glory,

spinning in chaos, in clouds,

in too much plastic,

with fields of purple flowers

and streaky pink and blue sunsets,

with hungry red animals

and black nights filled with a million tiny suns.

My Earth is spinning

and we are all riding on her back

choking on the fumes of our addictions,

dying in suicide bombings

and genocide, of AIDS, deforestation, and oil spills.

As we ride on Lover Earth’s back,

our gardens grow ripe with tomatoes and sweet corn

while children are stolen from their homes

raped, murdered and callously discarded into her grasses, waters, and sandy soils.

 

These are days when we all are clearly walking through the valley of the shadow of death so much so that the simple act of watering a pot of yellow flowers can become an enormous demonstration of optimism and love.

 

And I don’t know what to do with all of this. It’s a lot to hold. It’s a lot to consider when I have my own private grieves to bear.

 

In this vulnerable state of heart, a dead squirrel mutilated in the middle of the street can unravel me in a moment.

 

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me into the backyard some autumn evening where, in protest of the day’s bad news, I’ll leave peanuts for the squirrels, lay some mulch on the flower beds, then sit on the front porch swing with my husband while we count bats and say our pagan prayers to the harvest moon.  

 

Rhonda Chittenden Calderon

July 16, 2005

Des Moines, Iowa

 

Post college, my mom and I traveled to North Dakota

 

We visited my grandmother, Eva Lesmeister.   I was searching for history.  Wanting to feel connected.

 

A young queer feminist seeking deviant ancestors that have strayed from the story lines written for us.

 

I felt connected there like nowhere else.  People know my family name.  They see my big brown eyes recognize me as a Lesmeister.  We visited extended family members who still speak German and eat special German dishes. 

 

We traveled country roads.  Off to see the Homestead farm my grandmother grew up on.  It was late spring and many of the roads were flooded. 

 

The surveyors with their straight lines didn’t watch for curves. 

The roads make a nice grid but they have transgressed old wetlands. 

 

Yes this land in north central North Dakota has curves!  They are quiet and subtle like me.  

I want the freedom to feel the curves of this land

the freedom to feel the curves of my lover’s body.

 

My ancestors made these straight lines as homesteaders.

 

Germans who fled the steppes of Russia seeking freedom;

the indigenous people of this Dakota land lost theirs. 

 

My grandmothers remembers her sadness as a little girl when her father plowed under the patch of wild strawberries that she used to love to visit.

 

Planting flax, wheat and barley  . 

The Chippewa, Sioux, Hidatsa, and Mandan Indians and prairie ecosystem of this North Dakota land have found themselves supplanted. 

 

My ancestors made these straight lines as Christians. 

 

Their religious cosmology was based on land they hadn’t occupied for centuries.  Like the surveyors grid, their Christian views of our relationship with nature were imposed on this land. 

 

My ancestors made these straight lines with their sexist and racist culture. 

 

This land no longer a diverse ecosystem but land in production of a few crops.

 

The only thing growing here are nice Midwestern white heterosexuals.

 

Any stories that deviated from these straight lines have been plowed under.

 

I see the curves and want to cultivate a new story.

 

Here in Des Moines I’m developing this story,

a new relationship with this place,

this land and the living beings around me.  

 

I’m creating a new religion

one that helps me live in ethical unity with  the environment.

 

I want to make sure my children don’t feel the same sense of loneliness and disconnection that I felt. 

 

Like the prairie that once grew under my feet

I’m developing deep roots

An intimacy with this place.

                    I want to know this place and have it know me.

 

In this land of Monsanto, hybrid corn, and cattle slaughters

         I plant sweeps of prairie and have backyard chickens.

 

I grow strawberries and hope that my children will experience the same delight as my grandmother did with her patch of wild strawberries.

 

In a society of domination, conquerors, and war

I refuse to consume animals    

I compost – to give back

I make every effort to buy organic and from those that were paid a living wage

I’m obliged to contribute to the well-being of all

 

In the land of suburban white bred homes with manicured lawns and manicured bodies,

I live in the city – where the only straight corn rows you will find are planted on the heads of the kids playing in school yard gardens.

 

In a society that worships superstars and believes in technology like it’s our true savior,

Nature is my bible

         Those fighting for justice for all beings are my superstars

 

I worship the curves

         I worship the subtle curves of our Midwestern landscape

         The curves in my lovers body

         The curves along the Des Moines river

The curves of the moon and the sun, the cycles

         The curves of flower petals and tree branches

 

Mine is an ecosystem of deviants

         Of queers and queen bees

         Of homeless and homegrown

         Of neighbors and night sky

         Of rhythm and blues and big blue stem

 

Together we are writing a new story of curves

To create the web of interconnectedness.

         To nourish

         To connect

         To beautify

         To love