AND THAT IS HOW THE PLANT SPOKE

 

At a recent Ecotherapy retreat I learned a new way of being with plants. After some time with a plant, to write in a kind of stream of consciousness, without moving the pen from the page, following a prompt. In my case the prompt was 

The plant spoke....

I capitalize Speaking when I am writing about non-human persons because the voice always has a quality about it that I know it is a different kind of speaking, a non-human kind of speaking. 

The plant was the one above, and yes for purists I know it is a weed here in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is Mimulus or Monkey Plant. 

And this is what I wrote, just straight from the pen, with the references to 1980's hair bands intact:

'The plant Spoke about living on the edge about the flow of water and the stasis of rock and about how nothing is still for ever and one day it will be washed away and how for now it smiles and cares enough to spread and grow and spread and grow and how its children and its grandchildren are smiling nearby and how much it knows them and how it cares enough to do this always and how living on the edge is living on a prayer but all the plants here know how to pray and the wind is the carrier of prayers from plants and human people alike without distinction and how knowledge travels underground beneath the rocks and how knowledge passes to the next generation and after you know something you don't have to think about it ever again because it is inside you and when you nod and accede to the wind you don't say what you know because you already know it and the creatures of the river bank all know the same things and when something happens it happens to everyone and that is how the plant Spoke'