Our collective grief: A portal
They cut down my friend, the Plains Cottonwood (Populous Deltopids, Subspecies Monilifera) outside my old apartment, the one I could see from my windows. I am devastated. A gateway kind of sorrow…
To me, in this moment, here lies before me yet another expression of domination and control and destruction, evidence of colonizers’ soul loss. This tree offered regulation, refuge, companionship, sacred space, brave space, protection, rootedness, mystery, continuity, shade, home…for decades, if not a century, to me and so many other human and non-human beings.
There had been “development” happening all around her. I knew it was only a matter of time but…
Her presence on this land mattered.
She was altar to me. My partner and I had our first kiss under her branches. She held all of my worries and prayers for my first two years after moving back home to Nebraska. She was at times what felt like my only friend here. She was an elder when I felt I had none.
Her presence on this land mattered.
Just like the lost lives of so many Palestinians, so many unhoused folks, so many wives and girlfriends silently suffering, so many prisoners, so many others…it’s so much. 😭
I had two important trips around the sun with her, through the four seasons of the Great Plains. So I do know she is not gone…because death is not the end.
I will remember how beautiful and how steady she was, how glorious her leaves sounded in the wind, the feel of her bark, the groundhog who lived beneath her and the snake that found me beneath her one day. I will remember the storms she withstood and the offerings I laid at her sacred cavern.
I grieve her…and so much more, and I am trying today to surrender to such immense loss.
May we be changed.
May empire fall.
Keep going. God is change.
