The First Week

[Image description: An art collage with a half-finished painting of imperial palace ruins featured as the backdrop. A diverse array of people crowd the foreground. Some children are walking, running, skating, and jumping. Women young and old are having coffee. Food and groceries are being given away. In the background, some folks are making music, while others sit and talk, daydream, paint, do healing work, or engage in construction and repair work for the collective. Kites fly in the sky, and there are flowers springing up among the people and from the ruins.]

"The First Week" art collage © 2024 by Learkana Chong is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and includes a photo by Mycelium101 at English Wikipedia which is licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. 

An evergreen, timely poem and offering that paints a picture of a world we can co-create, together. Republished on the CompassPoint blog with permission of the author.

by Laura Eberly

If we all agreed to,
on Monday
     we could plant a pollinator garden on every corner
     and turn over one parking spot per block
     to vegetables and fruit.

But first, on Sunday
     we should assemble all the healers—
     all the yogis, chiropractors, sangomas, and sage smudgers—
     and ask them to have coffee with the matriarchs,
     and the refugees,
     and the trans sex workers,
     and the small town queers,
     and anybody who has yelled at a marble building through a bullhorn,
     or raised a child in times of war,
     and by lunchtime all of us would learn
     to locate, heal, and fortify our spines.
That evening,
     the musicians would find our diaphragms
     and teach us new songs
     to sing while planting.

On Tuesday
after the gardens,
     we would repair every roof,
     install rain barrels and solar panels,
     retrieve the lost balls and frisbees and kites,
     and remember that we are tiny beneath the sky.

On Wednesday,
     we'd fix the heaters
     so the gas could never be cut off,
     and install a tiny lead filter in every faucet.

By Thursday,
     we would know each others’ names
     and begin to tell our stories.
     Then
     the farmers and the roofers and the plumbers
     would be honored by the doctors and the lawyers,
     who had spent their first week ever listening.
     Next, venerations and reparations
     from the bankers and professors,
     who will learn that education isn’t learning
     and money isn’t value
     and nothing is the feel of soil in your hands
     or throwing back your head to sing.
     We will ache for love and owning nothing
     and for the first time
     that will make us unafraid.

By Friday,
     we will be too busy
     healing, tending, and child-rearing
     for waging war,
     so the soldiers will have no orders.
     The police will have quiet radios and no calls,
     so we will tear apart the prisons
     and send the guards to rehab,
     where first-graders and nursery workers will teach them slowly
     to trust humanity again,
     beginning with their own.
     We will use the bricks and fences
     to build community centers with wide porches
     where the grannies can knit and keep watch instead.

Saturday would be for rest:
     hammocks,
     creeks,
     and lemonade.
     We would listen to the earth
     and the spirits
     and our ancestors
     and our lovers
     and our beloveds
     and the bullfrogs
     and the songbirds
     and the tall grass
     and the redwoods
     and the oak trees

breathing

     for one day
     every week.
     Breathing.

And by next Sunday,
     we would know who else we need.