A poem for our Elders

At a recent long gathering dedicated to connection the depth of significance of elder hood fell into my system in the deepest, least cognitive way. It was my role to tend the North West, the elders, ancestors and heritage species of our lands. It was healing for me, and healing for the elder woman I was tending as part of my role. Her sense of invisibility and my sense of longing for a depth of holding unfamiliar in the modern context where both in healing through the course of this experience. One morning, as the huge August full moon still hung over the early dawn, this poem came through, birthed in one rush. I share it as a prayer to remembering healthy culture and the centrality of the place of elder hood in this striving. For all the warmth and wisdom they bring, for all the connections to other life phases they support, and our capacity to become something nourishing for life as we age. For the tenderness in those who have been overlooked and unseen, for the times we are in, for the remembering. For the connection between elder and baby, elder and teen and elder and adult. For my stepping forwards clearer than ever that to thrive I need anchors older and wiser than myself.

They have walked before us

I have seen them in the early light

Not trees but just as rooted

the elders, moving slowly

through the gardens of morning

Pausing often, as though the dew spoke to them….

which of course it does

They do not rush

Their hands are maps

of harvest and holding

of losing and letting go

They are not trying to be young

They are not trying at all

They simply are and in that stillness

The world leans closer

The finch lands near them unafraid

the wind shifts to hear what they might say

And what is that?

Perhaps only this

Let your heart be a soft lantern

Let your days be open wide

Let kindness be the path and the footprint

You do not have to understand everything

You only have to walk slowly

and listen to lifes flow.