Oh Mother, Oh Earth: A Song
About Sylvia
Sylvia V. Linsteadt is a writer & artist whose work is rooted in myth, ecology, feminism & California bioregionalism. Her latest book, Our Lady of the Dark Country, is a collection of short stories, poems & a novella that explore earth's magic and ancient feminine myths. Her first novel, Tatterdemalion, is a post-apocalyptic folktale cycle created with English painter Rima Staines. She has also written two books of non-fiction, the most recent of which is a collection of local histories titled Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area.
She lives on the Point Reyes Peninsula with her husband. When Sylvia isn't writing in her studio in the bishop pine forest, she can be found studying animal tracks out on the dunes, pouring over a slightly overwhelming number of texts on the ancient world after drinking too much strong black tea, making natural dye vats and spinning skeins of yarn, and dancing. (Hopefully not all at once.)
Sylvia can be reached at grayfoxepistles <at> gmail.com
This song literally fell into my head when I was walking up the hill through the pine wood from my studio to our yurt one day last November. I haven't ever had a song fall into my head this way; it felt like it just plopped down with a bit of mist from a tree, and I rushed inside to write it down. Now it feels to me like a song for all of us in these times, a prayer and an invocation to the earth, to the ancient feminine forces long silenced. Here are the words. This song is yours as much as mine. Sing it to the ground and trees, share it with your friends and family. I hope it will nourish you as it nourishes me.
Oh Mother, oh Earth
Give us the strength to make this birth
Oh mountain, Oh sky
Holy the serpent and holy the eye.
We are your daughters, and we are your sons
May we have the courage to become
Keepers of caverns
And tenders of seeds
We stand in a circle in your time of need
Oh Mother, Oh Earth
We kneel at your rivers
We dance at your hearth
We are your daughters, and we are your sons
May we have the courage to become
Seekers of caverns
And mothers of seeds
Ask any serpent how to be
Oh Mother, Oh Earth
May we have the strength
To make this birth