Tai Crouch, our fearless leader – cultural practitioner, retired teacher, hula dancer – reminds us Earth is a giant magnet circling the sun – a living organism, and that fifty-five thousand years ago Oahu erupted, and the eight Hawaiian islands are 3.4 million years old, and someday they’ll sink away, only coral reefs remaining. He says it’s all about rejuvenation – ka wai ola (life-giving waters) and kaua (rain). That it’s about seeing it all – all the life it sustains – as a miracle, and not giving up on it. That it’s about treasuring its heights and plains, healing herbs and plants, oceans and rivers. That it’s about returning Earth at last, after all the waste and exploitation, back to nature – Mother knows best how to arrive at a point of balance. That it’s about finally learning to go with not against the flow, the tendency, of nature, acknowledging that ultimately the source of fertility is the wild – giving Gaia back her power. That it’s about rethinking what sacred land might be, realizing that what appears chaotic in nature (volcanic eruptions) is simply “a more complex kind of order.”* That it’s about knowing all eight islands hold numinous life and spirit. It’s finding the stillness at the rim of the volcano, at the summit of Mauna Loa, and realizing we possess in our frail bodies all the power we need to rise up and proclaim we are Nature and never fulfilled unless nurtured and upheld by Her.
*Gary Snyder, from essay “Good, Wild, Sacred”
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Diana Woodcock has authored seven chapbooks and six poetry collections, most recently Heaven Underfoot (2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist) and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, she received the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women (for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders). She teaches at VCUarts Qatar. www.dianawoodcock.com.
