Sudbury.com doesn’t often get submissions of poetry, but when we do, we love it.
Recently, Killarney writer Crystal McCollom shared a poem with us on climate change entitled “Recycling Ancient Thoughts”. She said she was inspired by environmental catastrophes and disasters in recent years, climate change, and the efforts of young people to force adults to address the challenges ahead.
“There is ancient wisdom that has guided us in our understanding and relationship with the Earth and at some point we are going to have to realize the environment is not separate from us — that we are a part of it and it lives within us spiritually.”
Recycling Ancient Thoughts
On the night of the celestial thunder moon
with eyes cast upwards
thoughts and emotions press in
as trees whisper with changes in energy
I ponder the heavens and wonder
about spiritual forces that suckled the world
shaped by ancient thought
I wonder about the “others”
it doesn’t matter where the others are
I feel where they have been
where we have all been
contemplating the One and the Many
or the “everything-god”
with hidden names
immanent, transcendent, absolute
understandings born from the same
Cosmic Person
views of time based on creation stories
with mathematically ordered systems
of astronomy and geometry
circling, spiralling, linear
or wheel symbolism
as in Vedic cosmology
years contained within years
cycles within cycles
I feel where we have been
dissolution and rebirth cycling
through the primal ocean
the moral and cognitive laws binding
with the goal of escape
from the cycle of birth and death
I feel where we have been
to know the god who infuses the universe
we must have some of that god inside
like is only known by like
the whole universe is found
in the space within the heart
I know where we have been
our afterlife becomes
the food of death again and again
our emotional walls fortified with justifications
hanging tight to our beliefs
without actualizing the fullness of being
I know where we are
I know where we are changing
spiritual animism
shaped by ancient thought
that all things have spiritual essence
even our words are animated and alive
science is catching up to what has been
waking our eyes
to where we now are
acknowledging our toxic inheritance
an Age of Nothingness
flowing and straining the boundaries
nature needs our love
we must live a prayer with our earth
refill the nothingness with an Age of Being
Our editor loves running submissions of local poetry. Not all are chosen for publication, but all get read. To submit a poem for publication, email [email protected].
