The season widens a new breadth,
wood pulp passed between my hands.
Notebook osmotic in my camel back,
brackish marrow along Rock Branch Shallow,
water spider dancing on the surface
ripples at the pulses through his spindly little legs:
skinny standing ferris wheel of celestial gratitude.
This gravel allows me to move more quietly,
placing the Indian walker game with myself
tread softly woman, careful not to disturb the rhythm of silence
is hardly without a sound,
the Westward bound heart opening to sun light.
I will linger so long as it shines at me,
winking playfully through the naked tree branches,
box elder climbing stately sycamore.
We used to swing on the lower vines
despite our mothers’ worry warnings.
Parents pass their insecurities onto their children,
which invites the fears they so achingly face
each day of the winter. The witch hazel shivers,
brown curled leaves chattering on weakened branches
refusing to let go. We have made it through the darkest night
and sit on precipice of springtime,
the mellow growing song of sloughing snake,
black garter wriggling hurriedly over ground:
rustles ladies out of their eye sockets, shaken.
Sodden forgotten pathways through ancient rocks
that bend like waves are emotions—
this too shall pass with each calming breath.
I stutter clinging to waistline and sunken:
the abject hunker of stolen kettles.
Water once flowed freely about the downed trees
on which fungus grows like oysters on rock belly.
Toad-liver clock falling from proverbial white wall:
barnacles chipped off of boat hull.
Uncanny remnants of deer skin shawls
wrap grandmotherly shoulders around rocky ridge outcrop:
the mid-morning dirge of sacred Sunday learnings,
a reading from the gospel of grass
patches rising warily from holes in the path,
the settled center, depressed at the middle
by a one wheeled vestibule—heart-fueled human nature
defacing the state of our wilderness.
The laughing river at the bottom of the hill:
I can hear it, but the thicket hides my view,
the cricket misnomer combing over old phrases reprised—
at least a thousand offers at revision,
provision stocked soup-can riches for the apocalypse
is less dramatic than we envision,
moves gradually under toe and webbed foot
fighting off tornadoes consume the Midwest.
I swallow the hardly hollow mention
of telephone poles sticking out of the woods,
mocking my attempt to turn off my cell
and descend into some Whitmanian sub-terrain of consciousness.
The blossoming dissonance
of irresolute humans and our walking sticks,
the superfluousness of hoarding sustenance like a troll bridge,
the holding fast to crisscrossing paths.
All I can control is my muscle movement,
steady the downward walk and jagged talk of sensual pen strokes,
the bare mention of hand stokes me into overload,
the whole tennis-shoe load of constant friendship
with Mother Earth—all I need,
sad and smiling in the same simple gesture of blowing wind.
Stop to stewardess Her moss garden
and go running down dry river bed—
this was all submerged at one point,
a massive quarry, over time whittled down to stumps.
Oak tree bumps dare me kindly, climb me waving upward,
poison sumac sinking in surly between the bark,
the carved marks scarring forearm into letters:
something so pointless as a name.
Travelers come to trespass their thorough troubles
on the wood embankment,
yearning fresh-eyed and widening bleary
to understand the wisdom of water:
it finds a new path when a child throws a rock in it,
the river picks up, without thought of gravity,
the habits of Jesuit nuns and chanting monks:
slanted rocks turn black to better attract the sun.
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