Our minds have fingers
there is so much they can touch. 
Our hearts plump or reel in shock
from the impact of what they choose.

Some mornings our thoughts are happy dogs 
running on ahead to sniff out the day’s best, 
harmless as bees smooring to the next comfrey patch. 

It is a daily discipline to choose how much of the world’s darkness we touch and why.

We could be incandescent with righteous rage at the injustices of the world 
every second of every minute of every hour.
Our collective grief could raise the sea level overnight.

But sworn enemy of joy we can’t take Ecocide with us on every walk 
even though it whines and scratches at the door.
It is joy too we are here to spend. 
Celebration and active reverence give us the energy
and motivation to make our best difference.

So we write ourselves into a poem 
that turns out to be a path into the deeper mountains 
where there is a moon hut as round as a Mongolian yurt, 
as protective as the encircling arms of a she-bear 
draped with heavy tapestries of every being we have ever loved 
human and furred.

A pot bellied stove in the centre warms us through to our bones. Wolves howl their songs across the tundra to each other 
and to us.
A snake coiled on a thick yak rug waits to shed its skin with us.
For forty days and forty nights our ancestors
feed us warm heather-honey from their fingers,
cocoon us in the feathers of swans
and take the trouble from our minds.
We have never felt so held.

If you would like to hear me reading this poem and others, click on the link below.