Awaken

Courage is to denote the heart 

as the seat of spirit,

and speak one’s mind

by telling all of one’s heart.

To discourage means to take the heart out.

To encourage is to help the other

keep their heart 

within.

So I am here to tell you, 

my beloved stranger and friend, 

nature resonates in the key of courage,

and when we are courageous enough,  

we, too, begin to harmonize 

in its frequency,

and everything that lives opens 

to conspire with us 

to become 

more

Life.

Yes, there is grief,

but grief is the ceremony. 

Grief is the site for another kind of power.

It is the resacralization of sorrow

to make room 

for a world beyond

holeness.

So make every action

a ceremony

for wholeness.

Re-member to remember. 

In these times of genocide and ecological suicide

we must sacrifice our conveniences

for the resacralization of life.

We are now given no choice 

but to stand in the understory 

of a miracle.

So, re-remember to remember

If you’re a changemaker,

expect to change the most.

We are an ancestral remembrance 

flung far into the future.

Through a sliver in time,

life found a narrow passage.

We must now walk through it.

And treasure the dream 

no matter the nightmare.

Oh, and have we caused a nightmare.

We're in trouble, friends.

the storm clouds are coming in, 

and I can hear the rumbling

of an earthquake as ancient

as the humming of whales

long extinct.

Stay calm, this is an emergency.

I’d tell you if I knew, 

but the Future hasn’t said a word to me,

she’s angry that her children won't be born debt free.

Destiny said man-made curses 

are her worst pet peeve.

There's no fresh air to breathe in our communities. 

Working-class, Indigenous, Black, and Brown folks 

have always found themselves downstream 

from fertilizers and manure, 

and if your neighborhood is poor, 

they build the factories, dumps, and chemical plants 

next door.

And every new fossil fuel project 

will be a life that can’t remember 

time before.

Time before, our people used to sing

to the hurricane in the thousands

to honor the winds of change.  

The winds of change are here

and they are carving out a new song. 

The impossible is now imperative.

What kind of miracle will we be?

What mystical intervention will you cause?

We are in the wake of a great shifting.

Awaken.

We are the Earth thinking outloud

So, we better free our minds

before they illegalize thought.

There’s a war going on.

The first casualty was truth,

and it’s inside you.

The universe is counting on our belief

that faith is more powerful than fear

and that in the shifting moment

we’ll all remember why we’re here.

My friend, 

reality is made of  8 billion thoughts 

who made up their mind about what's real and what's not. 

So I stopped believing in false idols of war, greed, and hate, 

they’re not worth my faith.

And my mind’s dedicated to justice, 

and my soul is devoted to love.

And love is God, and God is truth, and truth is you,

and you are me,

and I am everything,

and everything is nothing,

and nothing is the birthplace of creation, 

and transformation is possible,

and you are proof. 

So, hold a mirror to your heart.

What does it reflect?

What will be the message

of the legacy we’ve left?

We were born right now for a reason,

we can be whatever we give ourselves the power to be.

Right now we need dream-weavers, 

bridge-builders, truth-sayers, 

light-bearers, food-growers, 

wound-healers, trail-blazers,

life-lovers, peace-makers.

Give what you most deeply desire to give 

every moment you are choosing to live

or you are waiting.

Why would a flower hesitate to open?

now is the only moment

rain drop let go 

become the ocean

possibility is as wide

as the space we create to hold it.

The stars have spent lifetimes 

trying to reach us with the message 

that our light can inspire solar systems if we let it 

shine like the moon's reflection

of her suns and daughters, 

great great, great grandmothers and fathers, 

foretold this time of great blessing and slaughter 

when we'd decide between drought and drowning in water,

or rising like mist from rivers, 

intoxicated with dreams to be clouds 

that give birth to rainwater.

I have witnessed the water, 

watched it flow, 

and studied its movements, 

'cause I know water cannot be held captive; 

it will reshape even stone, 

and we will be the shapers 

who carve out the unknown.

 

Poem for the Global Ethical Stocktake, COP30, 2025

Original work by Alixa García with excerpts from Hurricane Season: the Hidden Messages in Water by Climbing PoeTree.