Tom Hirons, one of my favorite poets for his poem ‘Sometimes A Wild God’, wrote a statement the other day about leaving social media to write his next book. In it he calls empire, ‘the Devouring one’ and I couldn’t think of a better way to describe our current culture. 

We become insatiable whether for the newest trend or the next post on social media. We become insatiable in our need for what is next. Empire devours whole worlds, whole cosmologies, histories, languages, lifeways, forests… We devour each other and spit each other out and the pit in our stomach grows.

How do we fight such a hunger both within and without? How do we learn to slow down, feel the gentle pulsing in the forest floor of the mycorhiza whispering?