TO EARTH

You put your claim on me early.
Inside cathedrals of glaciated stone—hollow caves—
I slept long dreaming hours.

In towering halls I painted lion—bear—
wounded healers of my soul.
The sacred recognitions I have forgotten,

yet glimpse in timeless moments.
O ancient day, I was not there when you stamped
the dark with seamless light.

My dreams birth an earlier time preserved intact,
traces of a life I cannot name—images
still etched upon my mind.

In trees I hear dying voices of all past selves,
ancestors whose lives I can only intimate,
each moment strung like galaxies across the horizon.

Incomparable ground—body of earth—
in you I find my voice. Under Montana skies
I craft poems about dying trees—stars—

Mt. Sentinel and Mt. Jumbo’s one face in shambling snow.
In winter I sweep stone paths in silence.
A pristine Erythronium braves an early spring. I watch.

Indispensable earth, where do you stop and I begin?
We interpenetrate—I am your word.
You—my eternal question.


Published in: Lalitamba, 2011, Number 5