Paradigm Shift - Pamela Singer Yesbick

[Larry Robinson]

Paradigm Shift
                                                           Millions of spiritual creatures 
                                                           walk the earth

                                                           Unseen, both when we wake,
                                                           and when we sleep.
                                                                                     Milton (Paradise Lost)
                       
Although my favorite things have always been: ocean, river, rock, sky, moon, wind
they have more poignancy for me  
now that the survival of  earth is so frantically upon us.

When I was a girl
I was chastised for seeing too much.
For seeing “into the insides of things,”
as I told my parents who could not understand 
what I meant and thought “where does this child hail from?”

The snow on the pines on the mountain tops of Vermont.
Their branches covered in icicles so pure 
I thought they were hanging with loaded stars clinking together 
become bells…this magic I always saw and held in my palms.

Now the skin of the earth, the soil,
is poisoned. 
The blood of the earth, the waters, 
are poisoned 
and whales beach themselves in utter disbelief. 
The eyes of the earth, the sky, 
fade and stars hide at night.
Elephant, tiger, antelope, turtle, salmon.
Animals live in such fear that they are almost 
statues covering the earth. 

Brother and sister wolf, bear, moose writhe
from the waste and need of men to hang their stuffed heads on walls
and proudly pose for photos with the bodies of animals they have killed
and cover floors with their pelts.
The blood on their hands invisible to them but visible 
to the spirits who live quietly on this earth
watching, recording their incomprehensible tasks of death. 
 
The first people who lived on this continent
took only what they needed for food, clothing, shelter.
Spoke, prayed to the animal at night before a hunt,
their graceful hands and faces outlined in moonlight.  
This morning, although there are tears on my pillow when I wake, 
I see brown bear standing erect, magnificent in my dreams. 
All the animals of the earth cover the earth once again
joined in circles of streaming light. 

                  - Pamela Singer Yesbick

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