Editor's Note: We are grateful to Mankh, our resident poet, for writing this very moving poem to help us stop to remember our home ... our Mother ... on Earth Day, Sunday April 22, 2012. Mankh's poem combined with this performance by John Trudell & Tony Hymas wakes our consciousness and together they tell us what is really important ... what really matters. Open mind and heart and allow the message to penetrate every cell.

- Les Blough, Editor

Mother Earth Day

She is Carmen Miranda with a fruit basket
Twiggy thin as a willow branch
Liz Taylor curvy on mountain roads

She is a Hopi grandmother with sun-furrowed skin
urban business-woman with cheeks as smooth
as a starving baby in Africa

She has the power of an eighty-pound Bushman woman healer
She is both the fat lady at the circus
and the teenager who touches herself for the first time

Mother Earth lets her hair flow natural
Mother Earth does not get labiaplasty
She knows how to regenerate
She knows how to feed everyone
and quench their thirsts with a drink
that has no flavor

Mother Earth is tough as nails and soft as moss,
hard as rock and flimsy as dandelion seeds blown away
with the breath from an underfed baby in Detroit

Mother Earth knows how to satisfy herself
and does not need to be fucked by oil rigs or fracking,
Mother Earth knows how to satisfy herself
and does not need the tops of her mountains groped
and blasted for coal, Mother Earth knows how to satisfy herself
and does not need her beautiful skin ravaged and pitted for uranium
by immature boys and girls with deep pockets.

Mother Earth loves water lapping her shore
Mother Earth does not mind occasionally blowing her volcano top
Mother Earth does not hoard the moist air
rising from her belly at the break of day . . .

From her deep black soil comes our nourishment
Into her deep black soil go what's left of our physical forms

On her roads walk the Abos, Indigenes, and anyone
who knows how to walk The Good Red Road

She understands because everyone walks all over her
She has a big heart because we are still here
She's there if you fall and she keeps your body at rest
so you can fly in your dreams

Mother Earth gives and gives and gives and now . . .
she wants something back.

- Mankh, Resident Poet on Axis of Logic

Robbie Robertson & John Trudell & Bad Dog (Live) "Crazy Horse"

READ MORE OF MANKH'S POEMS
AND ESSAYS ON AXIS OF LOGIC

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet on Axis of Logic. In addition to his work as a writer, he is a small press publisher and Turtle Islander. He recently edited and published the book, The (Un)Occupy Movement: Autonomy of Consciousness, Practical Solutions, Human Equality.

You can contact him via his literary website.