What does the ground have to say? | Wall of Echo

by Maile Bowen

Listen to What does the ground have to say?

I sat on a pile of rocks by a wild sea at the edge of the world in May,  

tucked up on a corner of an island, 

hours boat from any sense of safety 

 does things to the imagination. 

makes you feel small again,  

makes your humanness feel insignificant.  

I spent a month away in solitude 

 in an attempt to understand my humanness better 

Configure the ways my mind wonders,  

the ways sometimes you feel like a toronado rippling through an otherwise quiet town.  

Some days I feel too loud, 

 juxtaposed between feeling free in a body that moves  

and stuck in a body in pain.  

And there is something in feeling so insignificant, 

 Forgettable, 

on a land that many would wish to forget.  

I began learning something about power –  

 about power over and power under.  

For years I have felt that power was something I wanted nothing to relate to,  

something that could be easily controted and manipulated.  

But amongst the reality of suppression  

There are communities shifting power too.  

There are people who when standing together change  a seemingly impossible task into something that feels possible.  

Did you know humans could do that?  

There’s a type of power within that I sometimes think was forced to be forgotten,  

the power to understand, the power to give. 

I have watched small communities  

of people stand up against 

 corporations in defense  

of those that cannot speak –  and give them voices.  

I have watched my kūpuna attach themselves to barriers  

to stop the military from building on our mountain. 

 I have seen across a continent people call 

 from the river to the sea.  

I have felt it in my own body – as I slowly unweave life times worth of trauma.  

What other type of power could we ever call for ? 

 Becon in? 

 If not our power within.  

There is a sense of vastness to this knowing  

that I never want to lose,  

to re-remember a language stolen from you.  

To sit,  

hands to the ground  

whisper, are you listening?  

What do you have to say?