I was here when the sky had no name.
Before man carved rivers on paper
and told the wind where to stop.
I walked the valleys when they were still breath,
when the mountains hummed the names of unborn stars.
I drank from waters that had no edge,
and slept beneath trees that knew no shadow.
Then I saw you.
You came barefoot,
not to conquer,
but to listen.
You learned the shape of the land by resting on it,
the way a child learns a mother’s heartbeat.
You sang to the corn,
you prayed with smoke,
and your children wore the wind in their hair.
I watched you build lives from bark and hope.
I watched you lose them
to fire, to steel, to silence.
I saw you taken.
Your words buried.
Your names erased.
But I also saw your eyes —
and in them, the fire never died.
I am not your god.
I am not your weapon.
I am the earth remembering you.
I carry your grief in my spine,
your songs in my paws,
your courage in the stillness of my breath.
When the world forgets,
I will not.
I am the bear who watches —
not from above,
but beside.
I remember you,
even when you no longer say your own name aloud.
And when the wind shifts,
and the drums return,
I will be there —
not to roar,
but to welcome you home.
~
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