the oldest songlines are not on any map,
but are the map itself,
a pulse beneath the feet,
a scripture of footsteps and breath.
the shaman’s finger points to a vein in the stone
that we,
in our forgetting,
named a fracture.
to him,
it was a conversation.
they knew the spider’s web was a library,
each silken thread a holding for stories of the wind,
the weight of the dew,
the path of the sun.
this was the first edifice,
not built by hand,
but woven into the world,
a living architecture.

then came the dissonant hymn,
the bulldozer’s growl,
drowning the chant for the rain.
a language is lost
with every fallen tree,
every silenced elder.
a hand that knew how to touch the bark without harm,
that could feel the life humming beneath,
now curls,
anonymous,
around the cold steel of a chainsaw.
the river’s old name,
meaning “grandmother’s tears,”
is stripped,
replaced by a coordinate,
a data point on a screen,
devoid of memory.
this is the insulation,
a barrier of noise and steel,
walling us off from the truth of what we destroy.

we packaged “god” in a book,
sold him back to the void.
we debate his attributes in rooms of dust and theory.
they never had one.
their divinity was the green shoot
breaking stone,
a constant,
quiet grace that asked for no worship.
we search for meaning in the constellations,
scanning the cold,
distant void for an answer,
while they conversed with the soil,
and knew themselves
in the answer that grew back.
this is the externalized truth,
we look outward,
upward,
away,
for what was always here,
underfoot,
in the heart.

the unyielding contrast is this,
you cannot worship
a tree and then cut it down.
the hypocrisy echoes
in the empty space where its roots once gripped the earth.
their prayer was not a word,
but an action,
a gratitude lived with every footstep,
every seed planted,
every breath taken in reciprocity.
the real lost temple is not on any island,
it is not a place to be found on any map.
the real lost temple is the human mind
that forgot it was ever a part of the living world,
and now stands alone,
wondering why it feels so empty.