All over and outside of Cincinnati
you can shift the ground to find
a trilobite or graptolite,
or, in tenebrous creekbeds,
among the rocks and crayfish,
you might palm a gastropod,
hard as a cherry pit—the stones
life used to be, curled like rabbits
deep beneath volcanic ash.
The shallow oceans, continents afloat
above earth’s glowing mantle,
the mountains, rivers, trees, and weather.
If it’s smaller than your hand, by law
you can take it home
to contemplate it,
you can take it in your mouth the way
a geologist might taste the earth
to name it,
You can know it both within this time
and from outside it.
you can shift the ground to find
a trilobite or graptolite,
or, in tenebrous creekbeds,
among the rocks and crayfish,
you might palm a gastropod,
hard as a cherry pit—the stones
life used to be, curled like rabbits
deep beneath volcanic ash.
The shallow oceans, continents afloat
above earth’s glowing mantle,
the mountains, rivers, trees, and weather.
If it’s smaller than your hand, by law
you can take it home
to contemplate it,
you can take it in your mouth the way
a geologist might taste the earth
to name it,
You can know it both within this time
and from outside it.
|
Sarah B. Cahalan (she/her) writes about natural history, hope/grief/faith, the layers of places and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place. She has poems, current or forthcoming, in Dark Mountain, Image, Trampoline, and others. Sarah is from Massachusetts and is currently based in Dayton, Ohio (USA).
|
