Listen Deeply

Listen deeply to the screaming mothers
and the whirring of the drones.

Listen deeply to the news man’s lies
and the crashing of the bulldozers.

Listen deeply to the tanks and missiles
as they are rolled into position.

Listen deeply to the dying fish
and the fruit bats dropping out of trees from the heat.

Listen deeply to the gasping biosphere
and the reverberating cries of the long-dead indigenous.

Listen deeply to the vibrations all around you
and to the vibrations deep within yourself.

This is a holy place.
This is a holy moment.
It demands your reverence,
even amid the smell of exhaust fumes and landfill
and of rotting whales washing up on the shore
and of rotting human corpses in Gaza.
Even amid the blaring screens and the smirking lies
of podium pontiffs and Pentagon propagandists.
Even amid the dead-eyed dystopioids
marching through life sedated by smartphones
and sitcoms and sports and snacks and synthetics.

So listen.
Listen deeply.

There are messages here.
Buried in the code.
Hidden in the metadata.
Whisperings of something big.
Something lurking just behind the chatter.
Something ancient,
yet entirely unanticipated.

Listen deeply, kind friend,
because mark my words:
even within our oceans choked with plastic,
even within our minds choked with media,
even within our hearts choked with capitalism,
even within our souls choked with fraudulence,

there are still leviathans.

Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/listen-deeply