I'm very happy that my poem (haibun) “Faith Healing” was accepted into the online Submissions Gallery for The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders
This is from their submission guidelines:
We are looking for poems that speak to the immense value of nature—for our children and future generations, for our own and the planet’s well-being, and the resilience and survival of our communities. We are looking for poems that query our current practices, specifically the U.S. and Canada, and what needs to change in our consideration of the natural world, and that show new understandings of what it means to co-exist in it.
Before I share my poem, I wanted to give a bit of backstory.
There is no one-size-fits-all cure for Long Covid. This is partly because Long COVID comes with so many variations. My main problem has been extreme fatigue and brain fog. At my worst, I couldn't sit up in a chair for more than a few minutes at a time and couldn't walk very far without getting short of breath. Screens, sounds, and too much movement in the room by energetic people made my head feel buzzy and made me ache. I couldn't ride in a car without closing my eyes. My nervous system was in a state of continuous fight or flight. Even though I was exhausted and could barely move, I was wired and anxious all the time. Over time and very gradually, these symptoms have improved. I've tried lots of different things, some of which have been helpful, but others—not so much. I might write something at another time that chronicles my healing journey, but for now I just want to talk about the experience that led to this poem.
When I started feeling a bit better, I was able to resume a very modified Qigong practice. As a student and teacher of Qigong, I knew that it helps with just about everything including mobility, balance, circulation, brain health, lowering blood pressure, calming the nervous system, etc. So even though I was dealing with extreme fatigue, I tried to do some Qigong every day.
I also knew that being barefoot on the earth is good for us and that it helps lower inflammation, which is one of the things that contributes to Long Covid and just about every other disease under the sun. I was just starting to learn, through Carrie B Wellness, of the benefits of seeing the sunrise every morning because it helps regulate the body in alignment with healthy circadian rhythms, which helps not only with sleep, but all kinds of processes in the body. So I started going outside at sunrise and practicing Qigong barefoot.
The day before I crashed in June of 2023, I gave my Qigong class a homework assignment. I told them to pick a tree in their yard or in a nearby park and, after asking the tree for permission to work with it, do an exercise where, using a simple movement to help guide the breath, you breathe in oxygen from the tree and let it fill your body, then you exhale and give your carbon dioxide to the tree. And then you repeat the cycle, breathing in and out with the tree. In the process, you and the tree help purify each other's energy. So I did this during my morning routine as well. I worked with different trees on different days, the small red oak, the grandmother poplar, the Christmas tree spruce. I felt like the trees were watching over me, like I was in “the household of such tall kind sisters,” as Mary Oliver describes in her poem, “Trees.”
Then I read about how sound and vibration stimulates mycelial growth which supports the soil, providing nutrients for the plants and trees, which feed the animals and people. So singing and dancing (sound and vibration) can be part of a healthy ecosystem, supporting the circle of life. So that became part of my practice as well.
All of this sounds sort of complicated, but here's how it worked: I got up every morning at sunrise and went outside barefooted and sang a made up song while bouncing gently up and down (I call it dancing like a one year old) and then I did my tree exchange and a few minutes of Qigong. Singing, by the way, helps stimulate the vagus nerve, which helps us shift out of fight-or-flight and into rest-and-digest. If I'm singing, I'm giving my brain the message that we're safe. No danger here! 😁😃🎶
And then, one frosty morning in November, my granddaughter and I got up early after she and her sister spent the night at our house, and I invited her to come outside and do my "morning routine" with me. Later I wrote this haibun to capture the moment.
Faith Healing
how we got up before everyone else and went out into the frosty morning in our pajamas.
faced east, all four of us, our faces bathed in sunrise.
crow call
through the black branches
morning
Someday, when she's watching another sunrise, if she needs it, I hope this memory will also rise—of the morning when she was seven years old, just entering the age of reason, when her grandmother sang a made-up song
and shook her body and stomped on the earth to thank the underground threads of the mycelial network for stitching us into their
winter grass
beneath our feet
the roots
The long shadow of Covid.
Out of the mouth of babes and don't you forget it, my child.
Don't forget this cold, startling moment—how we were held, how the morning received us,
and how there are many ways to heal.
And don't forget how your grandmother,
veins
in the fallen oak leaf
in my outstretched hand
