This poem was deeply influenced by Chapters 1 and 2 in Diana Butler-Bass’s latest book, Grounded (HarperOne, HarperCollilns, New York 2015). I recommend it. 

Earth and water

Dig your hands into the dirt.

Crumble its fibres in your fingers. 

Let the grains of humble humus 

sift down to holy earth. 

The soil is all your relations,

decomposed and recomposed,

the dust and ashes, the legacy

 of everything that ever lived.

Your fingers hold the first algae 

that died and sank to ageless ooze; 

the first lichen that stained bare rock, 

cathedral trees and prairie grasses, 

hairy beasts and hairless hunters -- 

all who ever lived before you

incarnate this sacred soil. 

This is our body, broken for you. 

Dip your fingers in the water.

Swirl it, squeeze it, feel it yield. 

Holy water is your mother, 

the universal womb of life. 

Here was born the first cell. 

Here the first bold ones 

wriggled out of  weightlessness

onto a rough and rocky world. 

The water your fingers cannot clutch 

flows in the veins of every living thing – 

the gift of life for flesh and blood, 

for tree and bug and fish and fowl.

This is our blood, poured for you. 

Eat, drink, and be one. 

by Jim Taylor, June 2019