Love Letter for Earth by Sharifa Oppenheimer
Excerpts from A Litany of Wild Graces: Meditations on Sacred Ecology,
to be published by Red Elixir Press, Spring 2022.
After decades of teaching young children, several years ago I found myself with free time. I was inclined to gather a few friends here in my forest home; together we would explore the world of Sacred Ecology. I had been waiting years for this moment, and yet a quiet voice said “No. No human people yet. You must begin at the beginning. Go into the woods and encounter the beings who live there, your more-than-human neighbors. Go into their world; introduce yourself. They are far more aware of you than you imagine. They have been calling you.”
I was taken aback, yet the words of Joy Harjo, America’s Poet Laureate, echoed inside: “Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their families, their histories too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems."
Feeling clumsy, as if I had been sent to a foreign land with no idea of customs, no common language, no translator, no recognition of local foods, I simply began. Daily I walked quietly into the woods, apologizing for my unknowing, speaking the only language I know and listening with the ear of the heart. The consistent reply I received from the green world was joy, joy, joy! at being seen, honored, and spoken to. As days of listening have grown to months and years, secrets begin to open.
These poems are prayers ~ words of honor and thanksgiving ~ to the myriad beings seen and unseen, with whom I share life in this still-healthy Virginia woodland. I write for my other-than-human friends who speak in languages I, only now, am learning to understand. Sometimes I walk the forest paths and speak or sing these prayers to the trees in the oxygen-rich air they have made for me, knowing human language will not translate. But the meaning and my heart will.
It has not been often that I share these words with human friends, but one summer day I took the sheaf of verse to someone who might understand. Windows down, I drove through the hills lit by a hundred shades of green. A bee suddenly came in; I reached for the folder of papers to usher her back out. A rush of wind, and out into the emerald-soaked sunlight, strewn across the fern and moss-carpeted forest floor, caught by prickly wine berry canes, and hung between looping grapevines draped among poplar branches, white sheets of paper began their return home to their primeval forested state. I had spoken and sung them to the forest, before, but now they were truly given. Perhaps we are all prayers being spoken into life; when we are fully given, we also return to our original state.
They are enchantments. These words are written for you the reader, as well. They have dressed themselves in silk spun by mulberry worms, have rouged their lips and cheeks. They wear a subtle musky perfume and beckon. Come close ~ lie down in the generous arms of the wild. She is exhilarating, nurturing, dangerous, essential. She is life. She is calling you:
Come to love.
Come fall awake.
Come hold all of my cascading beauty
my aching fragility.
Wild, uninhibited love is the single force powerful enough to send us head over heels, out of our minds and into our bodies; to bring us home to our senses. These enchantments ~ the same magic used by the flower who seduces a honey bee to carry pollen for his petalled love ~ hope to entice you to love the world in ways you have forgotten. Carry this breath of devotion into the world…
To become bellows
that blow the spark of love,
kindling human hearts.
To set ablaze a love-fire
that burns out dead wood
~ domination, greed, exploitation ~
and leaves fertilizing ash.
To impregnate minds,
and midwife the birthing
of the new
To love the world is to walk the path of restoration and regeneration: a radical new-and-ancient relationship that sustains the one-being we have always been. And now we become again.
A Salute to Nations
when we become bees
we will know
self as sunlight
flowers
we will catch
bio-oscillations
~ the perception of others ~
ruffling through our wings
in the green light of
appalachian forests
other-than-human
nations convene for
ceremony
pageantry
gift-giving
prayer
wild grapevine
bows down
to touch sacred earth
troupes of
translucent indian pipe
are ceremonial
ghost dancers
proud mullein push
new velvet leaves
through leaf litter
wear petal crowns
forest raspberry canes
are lavender flags
carried in late afternoon light
a republic of
tubers
seeds
mushrooms
arrive from far away tribes
bringing gifts to give away
as bees bring sweet medicine
for all.
benevolence between species
~ our ancient heritage ~
will be a lived-understanding,
reality practiced body to body
at last we will come home
to the secret of love
hidden in the plain sight
of our own dna
Night Breath
In nuanced darkness
the spherical nature of sound
echoes in cochlear spirals.
Cicada’s song resonates
with red fox’s shrill bark
and moonlit breezes.
Through tapestried shadows
the breath repeats Huuuu...
heart beating its rhythm.
This breath, created by
tulip poplars and spice bush,
we share with
red-winged blackbirds
who feed their fledgling
one sunflower seed by one
orcas breaching and
shimmering in sunlight
as they play off Vashon Island
a bob cat whose shriek
punctuates
pungent dark.
It is a layered elixir infused with
the exhaled dreams of boundless
furred and feathered ancestors
since the first chloroplast
invited mitochondria to dance
a tango of symbiosis.
Each breath, a stratified
sedimentation of beings
a fertile broth
drifts damp and lush
through bedroom windows.
Mountain Speech
Walk inside mountains.
Intimately merged,
a babe in womb,
blood rhythm set by
mountain breath,
mountain’s pace.
Tectonic plates push,
glacial ice polishes.
One stone at a time
thrusts up against feet.
Ligament, muscle, hip
move to make room for
mountain ore,
mountain thought,
mountain speech.
Learn Gaia’s timeless alphabet,
the dialect of alabaster, basalt, granite.
Know the stories told in star nurseries.
Speak the language of comet-born light
that comes to rest
in mountain’s crystalline syllables.
Sharifa Oppenheimer was the founding teacher of the Charlottesville Waldorf School and is the author of the best-selling book Heaven on Earth: A Handbook for Parents of Young Children and its companion workbook How To Create The Star of your Family Culture. She recently wrote With Stars in Their Eyes: Brain Science and Your Child’s Journey Toward the Self.
After writing extensively from her experience, wisdom and love of young children, she has turned her hand toward writing about other aspects of profound connection. She has been a student of Sufism for many decades and has deep respect for other indigenous wisdom traditions, especially native traditions of the Americas, which point humanity toward the sacred nature of the living earth. She offers Sacred Earth ~ Sacred Self gatherings that explore humanity’s biological and spiritual inter-being with our other-than-human relations. Her new book A Litany of Wild Graces: Meditations on Sacred Ecology ( Red Elixir Press, Spring 2020) explores these themes through poetry, litany, and ceremony. The mother of three grown sons and grandmother to many grandchildren, she lives with her husband in an enchanted forest in Virginia.
To connect with Sharifa and get her new book visit her website at http://sharifaoppenheimer.org/
