Last Sister/Mother, Last Branch, Last Peoples, Last Prayer

A Prophecy

Stephen W Emerick

It dawns upon me as I embrace this sister/mother who

grieves the murder of one son and the dying of another…

she is the last branch upon the tree - and yes, she too shall fall.

It dawns upon me, standing by the forest, that the tree branch

I am wrapping with cloth to hold prayer flags for my lodge…

is a burial shroud, for the final branch of the fallen tree.

It dawns upon me, when on a reservation in North America or in

the jungles of Central and South America…the woman, the man, the people, I am

speaking with are about to die, last branch of Last Peoples.

Deforestation by no desire on their part:

Last sister/mother.

Last Branch.

Last Peoples.

All I am able to do is pray…. a Last Prayer…

that years from now, somewhere on this blood-soaked

mother earth, our beloved Pacha Mama,

a bud will arise from the ashes – there upon the hill and out from the

emerging soil’s soul -

…a First People, ancestral descendent of the one’s with whom I am speaking -

perhaps a new-born branch from the last forest’s seed surviving within the Mother -

perhaps even within the womb of a faithful and emerging new day’s dawn -

an ancestral matriarch… and there will arise anew… a forested birthing of a new…

First Peoples…

and a new heaven,

and a new earth.