Warrior Poets

Tumbling out of the dawn
born into the warm cocoon
of myth and tribe
in a world of time circular
Seasons that have been
return again and again
Nature’s plants and creatures
die but are soon replaced
with like kind
Humankind lived within this dream
through millennia swaddled in
this cocoon of myth and of time
which never failed to return

Then of a sudden man and
woman were stripped naked of
nourishing myth and thrown
into a world where the arrow
of time had come to be
Time now was a straight line
with a long past, uncertain future
and infinitesimal present
Thrown into a world of specialists
but no wise men
into a mass society
without tribe or family
under fluorescent glare
in sweatshops or shoebox
workshop staring at the
dull glow of the computer
and believing nature is something
the Disney Company provides

and yet, and yet
the myth is still alive
over yonder hill and
in that grove of trees
or comes to you as you lie
in tall prairie grasses
or in the voice of coyote
yipping under a full moon
Man, Woman, Wake up!
this machine dream you’re living
is not a dream but a nightmare!
wake up and jump back into myth
and out of your technical tomb
and run howling naked
under the friendly glow
of the rising moon

Sid Bridges
March-April 2000 Earth First!