Look with nature's eyes,

with atomic eyes,

with Eden eyes,

with primordial eyes.

Stand on nature's feet,

on terrestrial feet,

on stardust feet,

on Big Bang feet.

Touch with nature's hands,

with sapling hands,

with reverent hands,

with unprecedented hands.

Think with nature's mind,

with undomesticated mind,

with wild mind,

with ineffable mind.

Let trees erupt from your cells.

Release the bats from their cages in your skull.

This is the place where scriptures and doctrines turn to gum leaves

and we can't remember what was written on them

but we marvel at their beauty.

Let the stillness teach us how to move.

Let the spaces between our thoughts teach us how to think.

We are humble students of the great Emptiness

upon which this universe has been scribbled

by a baby god

in crayon.

The baby's laughter echoes through our caverns

and withers our precious minarets

and turns our manifestos into tadpoles,

bouncing innocently and nonjudgmentally off all our houses of cards

and going burbling down the stream

while our empires implode behind it.

And now here we stand

with crumbling egos on a dying planet

surrounded by frogs the size of Volkswagens,

the size of skyscrapers,

the size of moons.

This is a strange, strange place,

and it is only getting stranger,

and none of the tools in our toolbox are fit for the job.

I have buried my old toolbox in the backyard

with a horse's placenta and a box of Time magazines.

A tree now grows there which has leaves that drip oil

and fruit which tastes like the Reagan administration.

Those old tools have no use here.

I walk away from them,

on nature's feet,

into the hatching of this new world.

______________________

Reading by Tim Foley.