The great intervention

Have you dreamed of an animal
Trying to break into your home?
Trying to get to you?
Maybe you are hiding,
Or just worried that if the animal (or animals) move in
You will have to move out
Into the woods
Into a wilder Dreaming.

If you have had this dream
It is a big dream.
It means we are in big trouble.

It means the way we live
Has upset the balance
And the animals are taking action.

It means that soon
If the animals fail to turn us out,
Then the storm will try,
The wind and water
And the fire too,
They will all do their best
To flush us out,
To shake us out
To oust us from
The karmic backwater
Of our soured Dreaming.

The bandwidth of our mindset
Has become the world's undoing.
It was always their undoing.
It was always driving
A wedge between us,

Can we blame them for intervening?

The lion, the weed and the salamander,
The bug and the spider and the snake
Even the virus -
They got together and there was consensus:
Things have gotten out of hand.
Even the mountain said
Count me in!
If they need a volcano or an earthquake
To rouse them from their
Dreamless torpor
I will happily shake their buildings to rubble.
It would be a pleasure
To watch them run outside
Barefoot,
With their eyes wide open.

Then the barnacle spoke up:
Give Ocean a chance.
Ocean is sick of their abusive ways.
Let her send a cleansing wave
To do the job.
And everyone agreed, like I said,

The racoon and the butterfly,
The barnacle and the moss,
There was universal accord.

But someone said,
But who should go first?
Who will try to rouse them out
Out of hiding
From this truth
That has brought us
To such a crossroad?

I will go, said bear,
I have power, I have medicine,
I have visited their dreaming
Through the ages.
They have hunted me since time immemorial,
Driven me into remote hiding,
Where mountain lion bides her time.
And out of remote hiding.
I will go.
When they see me in their streets
Or foraging in their garbage,
In their blood they will know
That I am there for a sacred reason.

Let me go, said cougar.
If they see me
They will stop whatever they are doing.
They will stare,
Just like when the ground shakes;
They will cower.
Let me be the omen
Of our intervention.

How about me? said deer.
It's I who should go.
Let me be the one
To shatter their illusion.
I know you probably don't think
I have it in me
To crash their party
But I can!
Because of them
I am always running these days.
I will shatter their dreamless bubble.
Let me be the catalyst of their awakening!
Even if I have to jump through their window
I will make the sacrifice.
I have nothing to lose.

And so it was.

Hummingbird, tic and bat,
They found their way in
To the wonder and chagrin
Of those can-fed deadbeats, dog and cat.