Discover more from Caitlin’s Newsletter

Articles, poems, stories and thoughts by Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley. Everything published here will always remain free to read.

Over 35,000 subscribers

The Forgotten Ones

Caitlin Johnstone

Jul 8, 2022

Listen to a reading of "The Forgotten Ones":

And then one day we just couldn't anymore.
Couldn't keep up the maintenance on our shouldn'ts and shoulds.
Couldn't pay the contractors to keep building our skyscrapers of spin.
Could no longer hold up the weight of a world made of lies
and so we let it splatter on the floor
and sprout night orchids.

And that was when the Forgotten Ones rushed in.
No longer staved off by propaganda and pain,
no longer contained by our cages made of mind,
they set to work with sharp claws and great mandibles of ivory
slicing away the steel bands wrapped around our soft hearts
and cutting the bolts on the door of the old grandmother magic.

And they taught us— no!
They reminded us
how to walk on this earth as they walk.
How to step with a pregnant tenderness
in communion with the planet.
How to grow our hair long so it makes love with the wind
and listens for the whispers that are too quiet for our ears.
How to work with the land not in dominion but in friendship
and to extract the thorns of dogma and punditry from our flesh
and to vomit up the madness of millennia of civilization.

And we forgot our old stories of separateness and shame,
our minds now too life-sized and world-shaped for falsehood.
And we strode in companionship with the Forgotten Ones back to Eden,
untamed beings in an untamed world.
Untamed beings in an untamed world.

_____________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.