{"id":637,"date":"2010-07-20T10:50:20","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T10:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html"},"modified":"2010-07-20T10:50:20","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T10:50:20","slug":"saviour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html","title":{"rendered":"Saviour"},"content":{"rendered":"
This elegy and poem about what has happened in the Gulf was contributed by Thermal<\/b>, a local member of the Northern California Pagan community whom some of you might remember from his past comments. It speaks for itself.
<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n


<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

I am a great shoal of silver fishes, tens of thousands of me, wheeling and turning in exquisitely choreographed water-dance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Predators tear at my flanks, but I don’t care. I swarm through the living water, feeding on the great wet living pasture within it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I am one with the great ancient Dance of Life, eating, being eaten, embracing with every scale and fin and gill the Great Ocean-Mother.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

She who gave me birth, and from whose breast I drink my Lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I open wide my gills, to drink Her rich aroma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And swim into a great cloud of crude oil and chemical dispersant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

My gills clog, I begin to suffocate as poisons pour into my blood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I die and I die and I die, tens of thousands of times, in hideous stench.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

My food lies dead before me, poison to eat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

My predators die behind me, spitting my stinking corpses out,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

drowned in water too poison to breathe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And I awaken in my warm bed, the clean sheets holding me safe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I am sweating and shaking, the dream still clear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The stink of oil and death filling my spirit’s nose, the ache of Death my heart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Quietly, trying not to shudder and awaken my sleeping wife, my tears soak my pillow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mother Ocean, Mother of all Life, what are they doing to you?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And from far away a wave rushes up a beach bearing death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And it whispers a question with its rumbling rush.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“They?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And I am walking a long empty beach, the tide-wrack stinking of oil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And death, for it is a wrack of dead animals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Turtles, fishes, birds, porpoises, crabs, and some things so oiled and decayed as to be unknowable, filthy with stinking oil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I cry out for the Goddess to come and help me stop the nightmare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A dying pelican flops broken before me, and fixes me with a frightened yellow eye.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And the Goddess looks at me out of it, looks through me to all my lies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I stand naked before that gaze, it sees the truth, my own thirst for oil, my cars, my airplane rides, my long commutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I see into Her, even in anguish Her Love for her wild deadly child, playing with Power and strange machines, stands clear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Life-Goddess, she sees the Man-God, teeming billions of Her cyborg child.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And Her words, whispered by waves on a poisoned beach, are those of a dying saviour;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This elegy and poem about what has happened in the Gulf was contributed by Thermal, a local member of the Northern California Pagan community whom some of you might remember from his past comments. It speaks for itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,111,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-current-events","category-pagan-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nSaviour - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saviour - A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This elegy and poem about what has happened in the Gulf was contributed by Thermal, a local member of the Northern California Pagan community whom some of you might remember from his past comments. It speaks for itself.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-20T10:50:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gus diZerega\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Saviour - A Pagan's Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Saviour - A Pagan's Blog","og_description":"This elegy and poem about what has happened in the Gulf was contributed by Thermal, a local member of the Northern California Pagan community whom some of you might remember from his past comments. It speaks for itself.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html","og_site_name":"A Pagan's Blog","article_published_time":"2010-07-20T10:50:20+00:00","author":"Gus diZerega","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html","name":"Saviour - A Pagan's Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-07-20T10:50:20+00:00","dateModified":"2010-07-20T10:50:20+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/saviour.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Saviour"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/","name":"A Pagan's Blog","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Gus diZerega","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2","name":"Gus diZerega","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","caption":"Gus diZerega"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/author\/gdizerega"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}