Naked

Neither lost nor ignorant

{Image: Ghost Dancer – Kwakiutl by Edward S Curtis. Original public domain image from Getty Museum}

Naked

We began naked

Neither lost nor ignorant

But skin with ground

Tears with sea

In bodies-places that recognise each other

Relatives and ancestors

Living compasses

We began naked

Wandering in listening

In dialogue

In song and embrace

In naked skin, we walked the world

And the world embraced us back

Pushed by the wind

By the stories of the trees and

the prayers of the mountains

Through our skin we listened deeply

But

Through the pain of loss and the cold of fear

We cultivated shame and exiled ourselves from eden

We dressed in civilisation and technology

We wrapped in religion

We clothed in fear and voracious desire

We armed ourselves with weapons and conquest

And we thought we were superior

Unique and special

Through insecurity

We wielded certainties

Demanding comfort and privilege

But along the way

We lost our skin

The one who knows how to sing together

We forgot to touch

That knows the skin of the world

We failed the pacts

We squandered the cure

We stripped away the rites

We were left alone

Orphans

Thinking the world was silent

We ended up naked and lost.

Stripped inside

Forgotten

Dazzled

Not knowing how to return to a living world.