Unauthorized Conversations with Awe

Even amid noise and numbness, busyness and overculture exhaustion,
the world continues extending tiny invitations into participation.

Awe keeps leaking through.

The frog croaks from a hidden pond.
The creek practices surrender beneath logs and around stones.
Salmon waxcaps appear overnight, announcing:

did you know mycelial fish have been migrating beneath your feet this whole time?

Deep spring in late May can carry a particular feeling:

half-opening,
half catching up with the season already underway.

Summer within reach, but not fully arrived.

Parts of ourselves return slowly,
like deer at forest edge,
curious about the blueberry bushes

I obviously planted just for them.

We gather our juice like Santa Rosa plums ripening in silence.

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Meanwhile:

The 8-year-old tells a dirty joke about bees.
The lupine clan are already multiplying their joy.
Sweet peas find something to lend their tendrils to.

And you discover your skin has missed wild water so much
that despite its cold bite,

you jump in anyway.

Maybe earth intimacy begins there—
reaching back.

with lupine leaps and purpling pollination,
Ryan

Director of Creative Earthiness
Wild Nature Heart

below find a small root-thread from Becoming Beautiful Barbarians
(forthcoming August)

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Unauthorized Conversations with Awe

Don’t be quiet about beauty
don’t be silent about love

not in times like this

even the ones who think
it’s quaint and queer
this unruly praise

even the ones loudest and preening
ache through miles of debris

even the silent ones hiding
among the blackberry brambles

want to taste the fruit
of unauthorized conversations with awe

everyone is talking roots…

but we say, grow past
even the ones they gave you

beyond the names Empire gave you

past the farthest sideways glance

let your true roots follow
their twisted trajectory
and crooked hungers—

brave yearning creatures
seeking the Sacred Well

let them dig

stretch your inimitable stretch
undomesticate your dangerous dance

keep digging

seize your true and vital name
from the center of Earth

then rise wild and rootdrunk
until the secret shakes itself out

clean and feral green
finally screaming—

Yes, Yes

I want that too!