Can I Touch You?
--
It will happen
In a time of blueberries and corn
and the dead returning
as hummingbirds
as a morning sun glows white
through a thick blanket
of pale grey lit clouds
and much will have stopped
A pandemic unrest
will bring hesitation
Can I touch you?
Can I touch you?
And even bigger questions
that won’t go away
pressing you for answers
that offer no solace
How then shall I live?
Where do I die?
Where are my grandchildren?
What have we done?
And you won’t know if you
should pick up your knitting
or read more about ice melting
or clean your kitchen
or tend to your garden
or speak with your ancestors
or lie on the earth and cry
or write a love letter
© Poetess Rachelle Lamb 💗
*
…in a flood situation, it is only when the water reaches people’s hips that it becomes possible for them to swim. Before that, with the water at our ankles or knees, it is only possible to walk, or to wade. In other words, we might only be able to learn to swim — that is, to exist differently — once we have no other choice. But in the meantime, we can prepare by learning to open ourselves up to the teachings of the water, as well as the teachings of those who have been swimming for their lives against multiple currents of colonial violence. Indeed, what those of us in low-intensity struggles in the Global North (and the North of the Global South) call social and ecological collapse is already an everyday reality for many Indigenous people in high-intensity (also high risk and high stakes) struggles. These communities are swimming against the same colonial violence that subsidizes and sustains the institutions, comforts and securities that most of us in low-intensity struggle fight to maintain…
