A Cup of Kindness

Have you ever sat amongst the dunes and watched the stars ascend? The hush of the birds after a day of raucous flight. Jupiter shining bright after the last kiss of the sun upon the tides. Orion flashing as it rises from a blurring horizon, the sea and sky joined in an ever-crashing shadow. You wondered, what would it be like to let the world envelop you, just for a short while, and nothing else matters but the stories of sea and star?

Have you ever awoken to the dunes within a deep fog, the dark hedges just beginning to shine with constellations of dew and a strange cackling coming from the sea pines? The air feeling as if it may take wing. The world folding itself into tiny realities. You wondered, what would it be like to walk through the mist and bramble without sight? What would it feel like to stand amongst the crash and spray, the singing sea your only companion. Your whole world crashing into a tidal fold. But then the sun lights the sparkling waves, lifting the fog and your reverie. The birds rejoice with wild meanderings through wind and sun, and you wonder if they could lead your soul back to that tiny, dark reality, folded in a tide. Maybe one day someone will find you there in the singing sea and stay awhile beside you.

Have you ever raised a cup of kindness to a horizon of thundering pink clouds? The seaspray throws rainbows before a shipwreck. The sanderlings sprint back and forth before the tides while dolphins skip and dance in the waves. A humpback pounds the sea in a joyous greeting and you wish to speak back to all the innumerable relations welcoming you into their embrace. You wish to always be with them, or searching for them, not trapped in a hellscape of screens. The sea washes away all illusions, all boundaries, so it is only you and the music of the world. Dreaming as one.

You sat upon the dunes as the last light of the day shone through whispering grasses, your palms feeling the sand, half-warmed and half-cooled in its patterns of rest. And you thought, I can’t possibly go back to a life that doesn’t fit. It hasn’t for awhile, but it becomes more painful every single day. You don’t know how to change the trajectory or how to do what you so desperately want, but you know it needs to change. Or rather, you need to uncover the life that was there waiting for you to breathe.

Or sing.

All around us nature reaches out. There is joy in every breeze, love in every nestled wing. We can be here, always. Maybe. One day. If we choose again and again hope, that bruised and battered feathered thing. If we choose again and again abundance, that ruby bloom in the gripping cold. We have enough. We have everything we need. We can dream with nature again. It’s just there, right beyond our senses. A walk through shadowed bramble with a strange cackling all around. Orion flashing. A whale fin pounding. A pink horizon thundering. Raise a cup of kindness to nature, and see how quickly it joins your song in hearty camaraderie.

As I'm sure you've already noticed, this newsletter looks a bit different! I have officially made the switch from Substack to Ghost.io (F*ck Nazis!). You will receive my newsletter in your inbox, the same as before. And you can still access all my old posts online at the new Entangled Worlds site.

The only difference is that, moving forward, I may put most of my nature and speculative poems, and any micro-fiction I post, behind a paywall, though the essays will remain free. I had always intended for this newsletter to one day become a solid funding foundation for my writing career. And I want to move toward a more formal publishing practice for all my work.

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Thanks so much for reading, and I look forward on taking you on a journey filled with toadshade trilliums, hellbenders, and fighting multi-national corporations (always).

You are reading Entangled Worlds, a newsletter from Nichole Amber Moss filled with poems and poetic prose that radically imagines the more-than-human worlds beyond the Anthropocene. You can find me on Instagram and Bluesky.