Poetry here is related to material on this website.

Most are written by Bonnie Sundance with contributions from other community poets. Enjoy their gifts.

She also posts her poetry on booksie https://www.booksie.com/users/bonnie-sun-347371

—The Sand Creek Massacre Anniversary (related to website pages: Honoring Indigenous and Collaboration: Right Relationship Boulder)

—Of Wynn Bruce, Earth Day 2022 (related to Climate Collaborations website page)

—For All Women and All Life

—Spring Equinox 2018

—This Place of Forest 2016

The Sand Creek Massacre Anniversary

November 29, 2021

I. This history we inherit, the legacy of the settlers,

who established this town around the discovery of gold.

who broke a treaty made in good faith,

"...to protect the aforesaid Indian Nations"

And then mustered here to murder hundreds

of peacefully encamped Native Peoples.

II. I stand now on this ground with a bloody history,

an ugly story to tell of settler people

who disrespected a thousands year old reality

and the Native People who lived it....

and erased the story behind them.

We now have the difficult task of addressing more than a wrong.

III. Descendants from elsewhere now ride over this Land

asphalted and building-covered, teaching their children myths

of the Manifest Destiny that brought them here, seeking a better life.

Teaching children that nature is here forever for their use,

To dominate and take what they want, ignoring, and denying

The relationships of respect and mutual support which

Native people created with Life on Turtle Island.

IV. My morning again becomes a mourning.

I do not carry these things lightly nor happily ....

they clench my gut and unsettle my heart.

I am deeply angry that settlers who came to this Land

and those who followed them,

have left me this legacy, this impossible task.

How do I honor it? How do we collectively embrace it?

Bonnie Sundance, June and November 2021 Colorado

 of Wynn on Earth Day 4 22 2022

If we were, as a planet, where we need to be,

he wouldn't have had to do what he did--

Create of his body a message to the world

To wake up to the fires and suffering

which climate change is provoking.

That's my pain, my anger, my sadness

that we aren't unified as a planetary species

honoring all Life on Earth, carefully ....

so that he burned inside with a sacred intent to

use his Life to make a Sacred Statement

Calling us all to task for all of Life.

I bow in respect to him and his act.

Now my friend isn't here to continue

with us the work of shifting our culture,

The Great Turning in the midst of

the unraveling ot it. Please come along .....

It's time we listen to Earth,

open our hearts and all take on the sacred work

of healing our relationship, with all of Life.

Bonnie Sundance, April 28, 2022, Rocky Mountains, CO

 After reading the Sapiens Article about Guatemalan women which Christine Weber edited and sent,  https://www.sapiens.org/culture/guatemala-migrants-united-states/

this poem came on the NB Bus ride into Boulder 11:30 am  10/26/18

For all Women and All Life

I.                    

The wind blows cold and chills me as I

Walk, aware of fear – for the highland

Women in Guatemala,

The 8 of 10 Mayan women who are

Raped and carry Lifetime scars, affected, inflicted.

To carry this knowledge of

My Earth-Sisters, causes me anxiety

And like a magnet, draws up

Deeply buried yet ever-present fears

That I, too, will be raped again, unexpectedly.

II.                  

I remember the Hinono-ei women one hundred sixty years ago

Who were raped and massacred

By European settlers at Sand Creek

South of where I now live on Hinono-ei

Sacred Homeland, once wild and beautiful.

Now to the North, where the oil and gas industry

Works and rapes their reservation Lands,

Young tribal women are approached by men

Paying for their sexual favors or

Raping them free-of-charge.

III.               

 I distance myself from many men,

Still carry the unkind and critical energy and messages

Of that teen-age boy who raped me when I was a child

To teach me a lesson for playing with two Black boys.

I ache to argue for my right to speak my truth in this world,

As there is so much to speak up about

For the Earth herself, mountaintops razed, and Lands raped

Life taken from other species and

Too many humans ignoring the impact of their ways on Life

Too busy doing life-as-usual.

IV.                

The 1493 Papal Bull called the Doctrine of Discovery

Which gave permission to explorers

To take Land from supposed Savages and

Take their lives from them if they were

Uncooperative with the religion forced upon them

Still wreaks its historical havoc on

Indigenous People in present time who are

Denigrated and denied human rights

And likewise, on the Earth herself.

I trouble over all this, carry fear in my heart for

Earth-sisters I do not know by name

V.                   

Please open our shared heart with me and act

To create safety every day for every woman

And all Life, through all we do.

Find out and understand the impacts of

The way we live have on the precious lives of all beings.

Choose to step out of the box of your life

And really look, and write a new story

That takes all Life into account, on this Beloved Earth.

With loving kindness and a vulnerable willingness

To say yes and care.

by Bonnie Sundance, Colorado     October 26, 2018

 This Place of Forest

Oh, This Place!

Of Forest, Trees growing their Tallness

Of Mountains, Snow fall and melt, mist

Of shifting clouds and cloudless blue sky

Ever changing, yet holding me

By sunlight bright and dim

By starlight and change of moon’s light

Ecstatic moments so heart opening

At dusk a wandering elk bugling into evening’s quiet,

Its fog horn sound a sigh for like-company

Hummingbird’s whirring wings in graceful, playful flight

Little fur ball of bat enfolded in the shadows of daylight

Yellow and black striped delight of butterfly so near bouncing on flowers

These greet me

Each time I step through the door from inside a place of clutching,

Caught in emotional grasping

I quietly shed the anxious mind to listen

To the living breathing silence of life

Nature’s life

Re-Membering my own connection

Intake of breath from the vast sky and the fir tree nearby;

Flowing creek waters moving through my own living body, reminding me

To relax my way around the rocks and

Into the Earth’s ever present embrace,

Holding me Inseparable from Herself.

Bonnie Sundance, Rocky Mountains, Colorado 29 June 2016