Under Water Tree Poem

by Ishtar

I live with chronic illnesses, concentration, memory, energy deficits, pain other,
am struggling in school.
I stretch and tear myself trying to learn, fight to stay awake,
to think, speak, hear and be heard.
academia balances on top of ableism.
I bend over the ordeal for the shifting formations of meanings,
the soft word-prints 

On unstable ground, lines of other people's words curl up,
roll out of my reach.
Meanings brush my skin, then disappear
Brilliant words and interpretations of words lean against the openings to my brain
then I can't find them anywhere,
as if they turn into other things
disappear under piles of giant exhaustion boulders
later say, “Hey! You missed this thing under here.”
I traverse and trip all the squishy pages after flickers of wet light
thoughts and meanings that are changing the world.
I forget most of the details faster than running into shimmer.
Later, I remember something,
the sole of the running foot, the engaged arch so clear
before receding,
sand, ropes of bull kelp, reeds of sea grass bending
a memory baby maybe swished out into non-memory
My hope searches the swinging tide in handfuls 

“Hello,” the Brine calls from down time's island
“Hello! Remember turning over the cold, little rocks long ago and it was summer
finding those shrimp living underneath?
Remember when their segments didn't disgust you when you touched them?
Remember how they were your friends and you knew they were?
Remember the silence, the listening of your hand before it moved?
Hello!” 

Outside, right now, (I can't tell you exactly which now)
the sky is gently grey above this section of city.
Clouds are gathered in their sky-water hill-halls
relaxing, talking about their weather
cooling the ground, my heart, my mind 

Sometimes, information, meaning, is a whisper under feet
a flinging diffusion of seeds.
In my water-damaged memory, all the fish are getting away
to somewhere I can't find to get my hands on.
“Stop!” I need the specific cells of you.
I need a tree at the bottom of the water.
I need to wrap my arms around it and cling,
believe in slow solidity,
orient myself to the fundiments,
not the slippage as my wiring comes unwed,
not all that tangling and burning disease-time is marking me down with,
as we march here tight as panic in this water-damaged apartment.
I need a safe place to live!

In the place, the area, that includes all beings across time in a vast closeness,
all breath is shared right from the beginning of air.
Voices of everything sing and are heard in there.
I want to stand there within the speaking-listening
within the speaking, listen
And, for an unmeasured, healing time, in that unmeasured space, I do.
My great-grandma with me, my dead brother
and that white-faced giant cat being who came to help me last summer,
their luminous solidity as solid as breath,
as solid as the way I feel while I'm feeling with all this ample support
as solid as the love trees give

Being held up by that love,
reaching for soft, slow to know that love (even briefly)
to know that love even briefly with no break in the transmission even briefly,
I reach for the heart of this land, its hand through the night and find it.

The next day the clouds sweep slowness around my head
with darting silver expectations of sunshine shining through later,
later, as in not right now; wait until, also contains hope.
Hope is always dreaming up ways to escape like a little wind rising
Hope sneaks back in, then yells “Hello!”
into the stunned silence
comes and reminds me I could stir something up,
blurp something out through some unruled break
shuffle-slide sideways, twist and get out of there
pull up the trailing confusions
dry them, burn them, breathe in the charge
Cough. Get out as much of that crap as I can
as brazen as crow, start to laugh
sidle along dripping fir branch
waving my biological compulsion to survive
even when claw-clenched, partially colonized
by the hate, the harms, the violence, the lies
the tie-downs, the muzzlings,
the shifting faces of too late, can't happen, not for you,
too old, too disabled, not enough-too much 

Sometimes I feel as if I'm made of the yearning bodies of ghosts
all oozing wounds and tearing scars
at the numb and screaming crossroads
And yet I am still trying things,
just like those other people who have been sharing so generously
your words and hearts with me
I hear your love, defiance, resilience and so many other things
I hear you calling. I'm coming. 

Oh colonized bodies bleeding
Yes decolonial behind the pushing
reaching like light into underwater
to cling, to wrap, to love on time on time on time
to love on a different kind of time, shameless, joyous, reciprocal dancers
open-mouthed laughters on the squishy, pungent mudflats of abundance.

On time's curving, rolling body, community of everyone
Some people will never stop knowing it, saying it, singing it out
sharing their clear, open welcome!

I am so grateful for you, that you are in the world, or were
and that you are holding me here so close and undefined
I feel you loving me, yourselves, each other
bodies and breaths of lands
all beings in a vast, close everywhere
passing knowledge through all bodies
love and strength the land and the elders and others have taught/are teaching
Beloved ghosts and sorrow and rage,
feral children of rods and lost reverence and reveries
safe and found here where you brought me,
placed me with the earthy winds,
in a space that can hold any complicated hand,
feel the implications of it's okay and it's not, both and
“Hello!”
Even as still mountains are being blasted,
an inclusive, vast, close everywhere
“Hello!”

Wild Saanich Tea, March 30, 2017

The guide leads us along the shadowed side of an austere, narrow-windowed university building. 
I feel it squeezing dreams of free flight. 
But a line of firs make a perpendicular alternative 
and also act as an organic, delineation of municipalities, the guide tells us 
even as they grow their strong, green rebuttal to the stark, modern, so-called aesthetic.
Something of what came before is coming up again 
in wind-break for hearts and birds, 
in the raspberry sweet scent of new, green needles, 
in soft-tipping branches shading the ground where the sovereign past has danced 
and lain. 

Twelve thousand years ago, the guide says, this ground was under a kilometre of glacial ice. 
Such a short time ago, but before white people stole, 
smell the fires in August here, 
first people burning the undergrowth, 
gathering the summer up in nets of community. Singing. Drumming. Dancing. 
Step forward, reach the bodies of firs, arbutus, cedars
with living, Indigenous, cultural knowledge rooted as far down as that ice.

Caressed by the tail of afternoon, we walk on the sun's path.
Leafless aspen trembles with the laughter light 
soon to be shaking new leaves in the wind  
But not quite yet.
It is still tangles of bare branches, twig nests  
nootka rose and its thorns among the rattle of sticks. 
They seem dead, but they are alive. 

I reach out for the one beside, the older aspen touch, 
its flatter vertical lengths of bark 
splits for its character to grow in to its land-guided shape. 
It holds me close and quiet with its shadow. 
I feel the veil of what is true cloak this place, 
open time 
where we stand together serene, in kind dignity.  

I want to camp here never to be known by clamour or campus security, 
unreachable by all electronic means. 
You have to walk to me and stop before speaking. 
Breathe one full, slow respiration 
before opening your mouth hello. 

The guide has told us about giggle tea, which can help with sleep.
Just boil a little piece of that bark and drink it before bed, he chortled. 
Laugh yourself to sleep.

Now, sequoia 
holds itself present, 
never doubted by the land 
needs twelve extended arms, six people's trunks to circle its trunk. 
Dawn Redwood 
bark as soft as a bed, but the sun is still too bright for sleeping. 
The loam beneath calls my fingers to trace down what has happened
and then just succumb and lie down with my dog 
right here in the open light 
sleep. 
But I resist so hard. 
I straighten up.
I leave.

Ishtar travels and lives on the territories of the Esquimalt, Songhees and W̱SÁNEĆ nations, with their affectionate and spicy tuxedo cat and joyful, sniffy black lab guide-dog. They dwell in a hazardous apartment. They are in the process of unsticking their nervous system from fight/flight/freeze to help themself heal from chronic illnesses and trauma. They also want to confront ableism and other cultural toxins with more safety, love and endurance. They are hopeful, excited and committed to healing and decolonization. They're learning to remember to lead their responses from love, interconnectedness; long-term guiding short-term. They have a lot of questions about how to do this and many other things.