Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Meawak people of present-day Marin County.

Each week we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

When we begin to truly pay attention to the degradation of our landscapes and ecosystems,

we open ourselves to feel the responsibility of stewardship that was once central in our relationship with the living world. Witnessing the cry of the Earth and its myriad permutations

can evoke real responses of grief and deep love for the planet.

As you begin to acknowledge the wounds we've inflicted upon our non-human kin,

how can tender connections with the harmed earth foster spaces of healing?

In this week's podcast, poet and author Camille T. Dungee reaches for the possibility of sanctuary

amid pain and loss.

Bearing witness to an encounter between a man and an injured elephant. Her poem offers us the

opportunity to step into a moment where past harm gives way to an expansive recognition of love. The way she holds her huge limb forward, patient and expectant, while the slight man untethers the old prosthetic, a cage of metal, polyurethane and canvas large enough that I could stand inside.

Sweet elephant, waiting as a man sets aside the artificial leg, then turns back to the nylon sleeve that cups her nub. Rolling that

down like a lover or a mother removes underwear from a body they adore. That gently, that disinterested in causing harm.

That dear elephant steady all this time on her three remaining legs, while the man

strokes the nub of her mind blasted one.

It's pucker scar, a forever wound,

that reminds me of the chest of a woman who has refused reconstructive surgery

after losing one breast to the scalpel.

The scar, like a nipple, stretched into a grin.

I want to compare the look of that nub to something you will understand, America.

...