She Who Gathers Stones

O Dance Unmoving

I stare at your grand head eyes sleep-puffed slits
from the moving tram through a wildlife park,
and your thick rust fur, as dark-horned shade juts
off your round skull, cape falling to your knees.

Bison bull, lone, prone brown beast--
black nose moist against earth's belly
(her full deep field), your cone-shaped body
and your hooves tucked under

Once you felt the buzz of sun and the ache
of wind’s rough touch and the pressing weight
of clouds’ palms as their downward breath
melded into murmurs of wet, untilled soil.

Once you understood the deep thirst of grass
, and felt the sharp taps of rocks pelting paths
woven into your sleep through hills at night.
This morning you sense only pale chill,

as warmth and light have slipped away.
You crave the succulent summer grass,
not thinned-skinned, but bidding good-bye
to sun's indifferent winter light.

The Way She Wakens

Her darkened poplars
sense day climbing her sides;
horizon yields its shimmer
as they wake.

Scrub pine and fir
shamble music through searching roots,
a thousand hills distant--
they intone in cloistered woods.

Subtle is the way of her waking
forests and wetlands;
grasses linger, unhurried along her thighs--
ivy creeps beside her cheeks.

Light folds among the drowsing geese
across the wash of marshes
and deep ponds.

Jade glimmers in the shifting
trees, as branches lift to stir
arousing birds to sing
early psalms.

A maple leaf summons eyes to feast
on floors of ochre fallen leaves
she gathers to her breasts
with soft cries.

Crumbling redwood succumbs
for lives of cedar yet to come,
for ferns’ unfurling.

She embraces autumn mornings,
when slowed growth clears hours of thriving time.
Her brood peeks from within; her quiet dark,
a warmer womb.

She Who Gathers Stones

Split plank fishing boats with creosote
surround the sea-soaked docks and crumbled posts.
She longs for frogs’ sandpaper calls in spring
and speaks with sapling trees that bow to hold

the weight of spiders stringing endless webs.
At night she opens windows just to hear
the rain, its fingers tapping as she drifts
in sleep, she heeds the winds afloat with force

and voice to spit the needles wrenched from pines.
As pileated birds drum fallen woods,
she stands in silent study, unobserved;
her eyes reflect the bonds of trees and moss.

Her waterfalls descend to running streams
that splash her path across old river stones.