By Larissa Douglass, lcdouglass.com

LEAVES AND ACORNS

A lesson, beloved
The clock ticks a dream
Forested boots on cats
The tendrils through the trees
Remember the story
Of fur and teeth, claws underneath

Twelve dollars short on a bank payment
Bills and credit cards unraveled
Vines twisted around ankles
Hoisted high to sway from the giant pine above the orchard
Coins falling from your pockets
Silver-white in the dusk. You’re broke now

So you think you’re woke now?
You’ll have to pay your way now
With leaves and acorns
Among those who believe
In a war between nature and humans
They’ve listed the price of every soul on earth

I saw you at the fire sale
Hoisted up with other souls, all on display
Someone pointed, checked your tag
Twelve dollars for that? That seems way
Way too high. Inflation these days
Everything is so expensive

What’s a bargain? What’s a curse?
When this midnight waltz
Counts three, you will open your eyes in the darkness
And see that money is an illusion
It’s a lesson you only learn once
The money is gone

It’s a lesson you never forget
First, the shiver as the veil lifts
Then the shock, as poverty restores your sight
Write down your vision on tablets
Show the world your funny victory, when you see
It is money, not sin, which divides us from nature

Now the truth comes to you 
Like moonlight through an open window
Without the money
You are one, one of many
Who stand outside profane delusion
And merge with nature as she comes to greet us

Reunite us with the wilderness and notice
That those who try to ruin you
Bless you bless you bless you
Save you, save your life
They walk away laughing
Never knowing how they turned the wheel in your favour

Destroy the middle class, they said
Dumb peasants, bought and paid for, compromised
They thought bankruptcy would break us
Instead it made us made us made us
Only then did we see reality as it truly is
And we became greater in that silence

We talk across the distances
In secret nights of love and justice
In ways they cannot contemplate
In ways that make them fear the night
Because they cannot touch us
And they can’t see how to do this

No one taught us, we just know
We light up in all directions, look north first
Through the cardinal points to the spaces between
Spokes in the destined wheel, time turning
Into the rewarded calendar
So that when they come to harvest us, we are no longer there

Vanished, into the dying warmth north of autumn
It knows only the thud of fruit
It hears the chorus of birds perched amid dry rustling corn
Crow-filled conversations
In the forest, the sun warms grey-green lichens on oak bark
As animals hurry to prepare for winter

Ignore the lies, destroy the debts, and build your real property
You can tell them when they call
Of course of course I know
It’s serious, it’s really serious
I’ll send you some leaves and acorns
Right away. I’ll even send them out today

High in the branches, oak leaves turn gold and flutter
They convert credit cages of carbon and silicon
Into air and water
One day, you’ll look back and say
I lost it all. It changed my life.
It saved my life.

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