Hush

Photo by LeAnn Blackert

Hush, hush...
What is this language
I hear
whispered in the stillness? Just beyond the bird song and the calling of the crows there is a quiet voice rustling on the breeze,
a gentle shhhhh.

The balsamroot speaks: Hush, hushhhh...

Once vibrant yellow flowers atop long green stems, now dried,
faded to khaki stalks holding seed pods

high in the air,
small bowls of
new life.
Arrow shaped leaves, emerald green in youth, now dimmed to pastel and dry,

rustle out
a message: Hush, hushhhh... Be still and listen!

I have not heard
this language before, perhaps because
I wasn’t listening.
But somehow I understand.

Born of this earth,
we have been faithful
to our purpose.
We lived in brightness,
fed by sun and rain.
With the little we had
we have fed the multitudes. Stay awake in this garden. Stay awake.
Death is coming for us
as it comes for all living beings. Hush, hush...
the breeze carries our words just as it sows our seeds
in the soil that birthed us.
So we will rise again.
Be still and
listen
to our resurrection story.
We are part of holiness.*

And ever so faintly I almost miss it:

We are the Wild Christ. Hush, hushhh...

LeAnn Blackert July 24, 2021

Hush

* This phrase “part of holiness” is found in Mary Oliver’s poem “At the River Clarion,” found in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2017), p 86.