A Poem For Today - What Would An Indigenous Grandmother Do?

37 views
Skip to first unread message

Ken Dickinson

unread,
Jun 16, 2015, 11:52:22 AM6/16/15
to po...@googlegroups.com
What Would An Indigenous Grandmother Do?

I don’t want to change
my thoughts.
I want to change
the way I think.
I want to think
in images, in stories
spun as threads
arising long and slow
out of culture and
out of the Grandmother Spider
of indigenous mind.

I want to learn
to live in the old ways,
the ways of spirit.
I want to see
the signs and the
deep, precise wisdom
of the true ones –
ancestors, elders, any and all
trying to inform us that
there is a way -
there is a way
to heal,
there is a way
to see,
there is a way
to change direction,
there is a way
to give the children
what they need
to be safe
to be listening
to be healthy
to be whole.

I, too,
want to be whole
all the way into
death and, yes,
I’ll say it,
beyond death,
beyond it but not beyond
the cycle of being -
the ring, the hoop of
being together.
This is the place where
Love remains, where
Love sustains, where
Love comes
into and through
all things.
Love is spirit
flowing into the life
of the world.
Knowing this
I am left with a question
to pose to myself:
What would an
indigenous grandmother do?

Maya Spector

Sent from my iPhone

Mary Reynolds Thompson

unread,
Jun 16, 2015, 11:55:54 AM6/16/15
to po...@googlegroups.com
Thank you. Just the poem I needed to read today.
xo—Mary

Mary Reynolds Thompson, CAPF, CPCC
Author, 
Embrace Your Inner Wild 
and Reclaiming the Wild Soul


 




















--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A Poem For Today" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to poet2+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to po...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/poet2.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Fernando Aranguiz

unread,
Jun 16, 2015, 12:40:25 PM6/16/15
to Ken Dickinson

What a great reflection.
Hugs

Fernando

--

johnja...@gmail.com

unread,
Jun 16, 2015, 1:17:31 PM6/16/15
to po...@googlegroups.com
Inline image 1






probably something Grandma said

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A Poem For Today" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to poet2+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to po...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/poet2.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--

Patricia Rios

unread,
Jun 16, 2015, 9:10:50 PM6/16/15
to Ken Poet
Beautiful poem and I think fitting for Pauline Whitesinger, my matriarch and guide for 7 days -each one about a week long- at Big Mountain (in the Navajo reservation in the Arizona desert) during the summer of 2004. I spent the very hot days and very cold nights with her in her four walls and four windows cinder block house, and hogan. the closest neighbors were 4 or 6 miles away. I did what I could (which was not much) to help her with her squash and watermelon patch, with her sheep which would not listen to me and ran away... She scolded me for my lack of knowledge about the ways of the desert, she thank me for the massages I gave her outside of the house at sunset, and was tongue-in-cheek when talking about men... I will not forget her.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages