Talking to the Big Bear

Talking to the Big Bear

Outside at night
admiring the seven stars of the Dipper as it floats over her house
she asks
how do you stay together in your constellation
and not drift apart, leave each other, find new stars to align with?

The Dipper answers:

Bear sings to crow
crow talks to others.

Seeds ride the butterfly’s wings
Butterflies flap their wings and worlds collide
Stars move around the galaxy
but never leave home.
There is a sun in everyone’s life –
a mooring to oppose the random
flight of wild freedom.

Evolving through plankton, amoeba, dinosaurs,
bears, lobsters, butterflies, mountains and trees
you own their DNA and you know them.
Through them you are anchored to earth
and through earth to the universe.

There is no family if not these tribes
of nomads,
these clans of non-relations,
an expanding, elaborate
lineage of dissimilars
that hold the bloodline for all of us.

And you are part of a dynasty and royal house,
knotted together by interlacing
webs and snarls of lacework,
fastened to the destiny of the universe,
like the stars of the bear that sail over your house.

© photo and poem caf