samhain blessings

there’s a listening i’m remembering.
i once knew it
when i was young, i would
go out and talk to the trees, ask them
how they were feeling, give them a bandage,
some water, a conversation, hugs, friendship.

i would cry if we drove by a clearing - all the trees in a pile -
murdered
evacuated
removed
colonized.

i was still too young to be in the front seat.
i was told “people need homes. that’s how it is.
we need (more) neighborhoods. get used to it.”

i’m remembering i know how to talk
with the ancestors, those without bodies.
i knew that once.
and i’m remembering i know about the people with bodies
”not him. yes to her. not that place. no hugs for that person.
he’s lying. she’s wrong. they’re not coming.”

in Christianity, it was banished
withcraft
which was synonymous with “evil.”
There was “God” and there was the “devil”.
and that kind of communing, knowing, they said didn’t come from “God”.

but they didn’t know that god is everything and in everything.

Christianity didn’t want its ancestors unless there was a book in the Bible about them.
and those ancestors had to stay in the book.

and i was taught that God was a
He and he was in Church.

there was no land.
only parking lots.

but in my late teens that God quit speaking to me.
and i hated him for it. and i told him i hated him
and while he quit speaking lots of
professional Christians had lots of answers about why.
i quit going to church because it was just full of people talking
about the same book and no one read about anything else and
i wanted silence.

and then i realized that She was everywhere speaking
(being, unfolding, blossoming with knowledge + paradox)
that everything had its message, its frequency and in this way
nothing can hide if you know how to listen. and when i quit
hiding from myself, i learned that She was me.