The Sixth Day

If you've been reading the poetry here, you've probably noticed by now that I am more inspired by nature than anything else.  To me, the math is pretty simple.  We were created, and the world around us was created, to be together.  No matter how distinct we try to make ourselves from the rest of creation, it is a fundamental fact of our existence.  In fact, the greater the distance we try to put between ourselves and nature, the more we try to separate ourselves from it, the more we see ourselves in it, at least the true parts of ourselves.  So, if you want to find truth, look to nature - it's incapable of lying.    

The Sixth Day

Traveling in Alaska one summer

I witnessed the land

-no, not witnessed-

I became the land. 

Because I

became the land, I know

what it feels like to be

gouged by the scratching

fingernails of glaciers

pulling back,

exposing my fresh, bright earth

to the air

for the first time in eons

if ever.

Wild rampant green

born from gray ice.

I know the feeling

of having my old skin

punctured through by new bones.

Clustered mountains masses

hefted upwards

ridges and peaks

jagged, sharp and almost

done

as on the sixth day.

And even though I wasn’t there to see it

I know the burning and the burnt

of charred forests fire flattened

tree stubble sprayed across

five hundred square miles

of my face.

I feel it there, too

life-mad surging green against the black.

As the land

I watch the sun and track

its awkward movements

unsteady as a foal

wobbling to surprising places

In the sky.

And I remember

-like it was yesterday-

the thrilling weakness

of learning my legs.

I am inside the wild rose scrambling

my slender arms unfurling, entwining

raucous, tumbling reckless over everything.

Charged by the lightning bolt of life

propelled by the lifting swell of creation

I touch everything

with pink blossoms.

One summer in Alaska I recognized

a certain truth:

it is still the sixth day of creation

in the land that is me.