This poem was ‘authored’ by Marina ‘heron’ Tsaplina in December 2023 for a theatrical staging of Soils and Spirit in April 2024.
But more accurately, Marina was the vessel for this poem.
This poem fell into her, nearly whole, words emerging in one exhale and shape.
So far, this poem has been translated into Lenape - one of the original languages born out of the Land of Lenapehoking (NYC) by Nohham Rolf Cachet-Schilling, and into Kichwa/Quechua by Wayra Velazquez for the 2025 Ecuador Soil Assembly.
SOILS AND SPIRIT: Into That Ruptured Place
Call back all that you think you know
And begin to remember otherwise
Your breath, enfleshed
The soles of your feet, dreaming
Forget definitions of thought
Release all hierarchies of being
Go to that place
Where you were told
That you were kicked out
From belonging
Go to that break
That broke
the earth
From you
Bring yourself where
You feel unwanted
Bring the palms of your feet
Into that ruptured place
And wait there.
Wait.
Wait until
The patterns of this place
This one, the one that is Holding you
Begin Quietly expressing,
With no declarations.
Wait in the break,
As if discarded
Listening to patterns
dancing, humming
Each pattern
Thinking
Each one
Speaking
Each pattern imprinting
Songs that you do
Not yet know.
Do not yet remember.
Songs that are older than you.
Songs that are not for you.
Songs not about you.
Songs that teach you
That you are of these songs
In this break,
Between flesh
And earth,
Call back
Your forgetting
Call back
Your terrified aloneness
Call back
The hunger
That robbed
You from hearing
How this place
That holds you
Speaks
Call back your terror
And futility
Call back your arrogance
Sow humility
Call back the palms of your feet
From grabbing these soils
Soils that can
Never fully be possessed
Yet can be destroyed
Call back possession and forgetting
From your breath, eyes, tongue, throat, arms, stomach, fingers, feet
Ache
Ache in your creaking
Stumbling unknowing
From the stumbling break,
Call back the waves,
The rocking of the docking ships,
Of those men
Whose young names
These soils lakes rivers forests bridges
Miscarry
See them! (Columbus, Hudson, Verazzano, and all the rest)
Walking back in time,
Flags in hand,
Rowing their ships back
And back
And back
And back
Rowing into the deepest parts of themselves
Into the parts suffocated dominated and discarded
Let them know
That you too
Are here
Waiting
Waiting in the break
Waiting.
These soils Waiting
for you to learn
The laws and songs of
this Place.
This one the one,
who too
has to learn
How now to hold you.
December 2023 (c) Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina