The Feathers
So I will provide the feathers. I am staying as much as possible out of grief and fear. I realize I need to work harder on the environment and this earth I so love, the animals other than just humans, the air, the water, all the parts of our lives that we keep in our protective care. We all will need to care even more.
When I worked with wildlife, I learned so much about humans, but it was when I worked with birds of prey that the Elder Eagle taught me everything about peace, care, love, and how to be the best human I could be. She required that I stay calm and present, aware of her own presence, that I allow her to put a wing over my bent body, never move fast, let her hold my arm with her feet (or claws as some say.) The many other eagles respected her as much as I did. The ones from outside came to visit her. I knew, as is true with all the very large birds, that she could have killed me or hurt me, but I trusted her as much as she did me. It was living inside a poem.
The next years are going to be hard. And while Grandmother Eagle is gone now, I am taking all those lessons for caring and respecting everything and everyone I greet, whether tree, bird, snake, or owl shaking its feathers in the moonlight. I will work hard to protect them all and with the same grace of that Elder who wanted no one to enter unless they first put themselves in the right frame of mind.
I refuse the plans any other so-named leader has for us, for the many lives here, for the damage already part of his own internal chaos and misery. So I will provide the feathers.
A major American writer and the recipient of the 2007 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Spirit of the West Literary Achievement Award, LINDA HOGAN is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, teacher, and activist who has spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Colorado. Her fiction has garnered many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and her poetry collections have received the American Book Award, Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination.
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