Retrench

BY Arlene Downing-Yaconelli

Retrench

I am from what used to be a
small suburb of Sacramento,
California

I am from a lush golden valley
a place of horns and hoofs,
bears and foxes, coyotes,
hunting eagles and soaring vultures.
Where water runs wild in
sweetly raging rivers, guided
between steep canyon walls
to fertile wild-flowered flatlands,
pausing on the way
to water ancient sequoias,
and butterscotch-scented Jeffrey Pines,
Where the snow melt pools
in crystalline granite-bowled
icy lakes and spreads over miles
of wet land to nourish
feathered migrating millions.
Where the salmon ran each year
uphill for leagues into
the heart of the land, offering
themselves to a people we
have decimated and
confined to casinos.
A place we have slashed, washed out,
burned, dug through, drained, cut,
desiccated, over-worked and sold
for a mess of pottage.

No more.

This year we begin
in earnest to honor and succor
this home, the planet
that has given us birth
and a place among the stars.