We are a system,
believing in different systems,
it makes for a complicated rhythm.
My child lays their head on my breast and listens to my breath
while a cub tussles with the others their mom brushes through the bushes
a tree shouts “watch out!” as a beetle makes it way around
we are a system with input and output
where pressure is put on projections
because in a few years those trees may have infections that impacts those cubs,
that constricts my lungs, my child cries.
Simple systems thinking dismisses systems that are not simple.
Our system is complex, it’s full of webs,
connected at the seems to every living being, to everything that is not breathing.
Complexity is compassion, it is construction and conservation
constructing conserving spaces during the challenges creation faces.
When we speak of nations, include the cubs, the shrubs, baby faces and cold places, ask the river what it needs, consider what the mountains have seen, hear from every culture what it brings, the birds and bugs and bees, the tiniest seeds from a big breeze, deserts and alpine trees, generational families; what they sing to their offspring, the words and verbs, their way of acting. For when it comes to systems thinking, we must think of listening.
Cass, ’24