AYNI, The Ancient Law of Reciprocity

I found this poem I wrote last year right before the election and feel it even more now that this ancient law is being so completely violated.

AYNI
What’s possible now that we know
you can drown in Ashville North Carolina?
What’s ahead when there is open war
on two fronts in the Middle East?

 
What do young people have to hope for
if they are immigrants, or non-binary
or simply out-to-sea in digital media?

 
What if the Quechua in the high mountains of Peru are right,
that there is one law that should not be broken—the law of AYNI,
reciprocity, keeping the balance?

 
Is it surprising the energy and inspiration
has leaked out of coalitions and organizations as people separate to meet only online?

 
Was it Gutenberg who separated us
from spoken wisdom, substituting
tracts and print?

Was it Galileo and Newton, dreaming of
perfection in prediction? (Only possible
in a world of objects, measured and weighed).

 
Or was it priests and clergymen
who taught distrust in our inner knowing
to curry loyalty to the church?

 
The numbing may be so pervasive
that we aren’t even noticing the substitutions—
stimulants for a sense of awe,
busyness for belonging,
alcohol and power for a direct sense of the divine.

 
Some suspect the Earth is aware of this,
and moves to waken us
from our separateness,
to restore AYNI,
to help us care again.

 
Perhaps our trials really are trials,
with judgements and a sentence.
Die
or find a way
back to AYNI and the light.

David Sibbet 10-8-24