I’m planting saplings to grow a tree
whose limbs may be climbed by one I will never know.
Isn’t every encounter with life
a guide for a child of the wind?
I’m choosing
to follow the clarity of deer, wolf and owl,
as they maintain rituals of each season,
remembering that each creature aligns
with beginnings and endings.
It is my responsibility to reveal
who I am through what I nurture.
Nurturing matters.
To care for soil,
seeds, water and air,
the oak and apple,
hawk and crow,
whale and starfish,
families and our mothers,
is to be one in the circle of life.
If the lives of our ancestors cease to exist,
all we have is what is written,
but that too stays locked in time.
Living beings need living teachers,
in order to be a resilient world.
—
Jesse LoVasco (she/her) is a poet, visual artist and herbalist residing in unceded land of both Anishnabe in Michigan and Abenaki in Vermont. She studied poetry at Vermont College. Her book Native was published in 2020. She was a participating fellow of Nature Culture’s Writing the Land Project, with poems in the anthologies Windblown l and Migration and Home, as well as a yearly contributor and facilitator for PoemCity in Montpelier, VT.
