"Setting the Scene" by Miriam Entin-Bell(she/her)

We have come to this beach

with the knowledge that salty sand

is rarely as fertile as good brown soil.

And this is what is left. This is knowing our inheritance.

We are unsure what world, what port,

what great city was burned

this close to the ocean. We have come to sow

seeds in its ruins, in this half-place.

And to cultivate life one must understand what is asked of it.

We hear water carving through sand, thirsty

for the ocean, and run to it. Running in the water

are flakes of ash. Little slugs with one eye peer straight

up as they bob along upstream in a line.

We peer back at them in wonder.

And to adapt is to survive which can be akin to living.

And to arrive after fire is to know that ash is fertilizer.

We have lived here and left before the fire.

We have come back with great hope.

And to harbor life you must know how far how long you can carry it.

And you can not always know. And to carry it regardless is Faith.

The scene is set. We are spread out in rows,

hundreds of bodies digging, framed

against this east coast dusk. We are peeling seeds

already sprouted in our pockets

and putting them into the sand.

And we have come back with great hope.

And it is spring.

This poem is based on a series of dreams I had in early June 2020. I would wake up in the dream having walked years to get somewhere that is burned, desolate, and flat. There were seeds in my pockets and people in front of and behind me. It was the earth but not this earth as we inhabit it now. I started sleeping differently this June-waking up at five in the morning and then drifting back into a half-sleep, noticing how sunrise light comes in through my window. There was a voice that felt like god, like the earth in these dreams; there were lessons for me in its repetition that felt other-wordly. This dream is about interrogating my whiteness; this burned land is my doing and my ancestors doing. Those slugs are my creation and that is ugly and scary. This dream is also about community, about world re-creation and re-imagination, the hard and the joyful parts of that. This dream is about faith in transformation, faith in land, and faith in the people who you are on it with. I’m not sure if this particular fire has come, if we are in it, or if it is coming soon.