-Willow Clan, Sustainable Vocations 2011

Wherever there is blue sky and green trees

integrated, inseparable,

there is the heart.

The heart which a wise donkey once told me,

Is like an onion. Many layers, one after the other.

But how can the heart be like an onion?

For the onion runs out of layers

and the heart never seems to.

My Kitchen was the place to find an answer

where there was smooth gray surface

and an all too human habitation

integrated, inseparable.

So, I took my knife to the onion

and it grew more beautiful with each passing layer

until there was nothing left.

Yet I still held the universe in the palm of my hand.

-Willow Clan, Sustainable Vocations August 2011

When our gas gurgling giants screeched up

enough dirt

to fog our rearview mirrors,

a new door swung open.

Three cars, a clear forward vision and growing dust

in our tracks

Dust that was there,

long before

we stirred it up

beneath and around us.

Yet only this visible road made our histories dusty.

To turn back requires a life

of dust.

Dust of oil of plastic of consumerism of unusable waste.

Once it’s kicked up in your tracks,

the world becomes

a pattern of sense

and the choices of your future become few.

A perfectly clear road and one infiltrated with thick brown dust.

We’ve gotten through an there’s no turning back.

Our roads inevitably will be paths to the clarity

we now

know

exists.

-Danielle, Juniper Clan Sustainable Vocations 2011