In you I live and have my physical being
Like you I am rooted on this planet

I cannot know myself without you..

 

You draw from the Earth

and the Sun to nurture me and many other life forms

as we all draw your sweet love into ourselves

Air.

 

If NASA and friends

fling me to Jupiter and back

I will travel with you, as You,

Your essence, my very existence

Oxygen                                               Air                                           Breath

 

I can only be human

on a spaceship to Jupiter

because I draw you into me

your essence, my animation

Oh Tree, my Earth Mother.

To the people among whom I emerged,

they call you Mutí, in resonance with Mutinhiro

the Sound of creation,

they call you Mutí, in resonance with the

me, munhu, the person I am,

and all my kin in the wind, earth, fire, and waters.

 

To the people among whom I was raised

they call you isiHlahla

in resonance with uMhlaba, this Earth,

our swirling Parent who keeps faith

with our blazing, aging Ancestor,

the Sun,

pulsing lifegiving heat,

and murderous radiation,

all in a graceful dance,

in the Infinite Universe.

Awu, Mutí wangu, my Earth Mother,

I cannot know myself without you.
My consciousness is not possible

without drawing you into me,

with each conscious and unconscious breath.

 

Even as you are fast

disappearing on this planet

I cannot live a moment

without your essence, Air, Breath

Oh Tree, my Earth Mother

 

We humans crave to possess your body and limbs

making homes, beds, toys, tables, coffins, 

even as we continue to cut. dig. pollute.

All the while deploring a doomed future

One we have created for this ancient Earth,

forgetting that we are because the Earth is.

 

Hunhu-Ubuntu is kinship with you,

Tree, my Earth Mother.

Reciprocity is not just an exchange

of my breath, carbon dioxide, for yours, oxygen

Reciprocity is growing and tending to

more of you everywhere you love to be

on this ancient Earth.

I can subsist on, and make do with, all else,

but I cannot subsist without you

Oh Tree, my Earth Mother,

There is not a chance for me without breath,

without drawing you into me

and you drawing me into you,

in eternal reciprocity on this Earth.

Each season you call me to you

with your shimmering colors of Love on the leaves

in brown, red, orange, yellow, and green, ah green!

Each day you call to me in shades brown, gray, and moss-covered bark,

Your branches a welcome to me and a wave of greeting to the cosmos!

Those tangled roots, sunk deep, keep faith with the waters

And with this ancient Earth,

our parent and grandparent, the All In One,

The One and Only spaceship we have

To wake up to our greatness in the Infinite.

So, when finally my life is lived

I shall, like a butterfly,

shed my old form, this life,

and be in union with You,

as ash and compost, soil, and dirt for the living trees

who are breath and air, for the living.

 

But while I live,

I am yours, Oh Tree,

Now and at the hour of my death

and resurrection.