I stand on the mound
beneath the only tree.
Water rises.
The calves have no choice
but to join me,
though they know I am the shadow
of the knife
at their necks
and we stand in the bones
of their mothers.
Land takes back the forgotten name of rain
and speaks it
like a roar, dark and running
away from breaking sky.
Where will it take us, time, water,
the uneasy slope of this land
that runs from itself
and thins into other lands
crossing empty space we’ve cried in,
washed down to the wound,
when we were crowded too long,
and began to see again
the beautiful unwinding field
and remember our lives
from before the time of science,
before we fell from history,
and the rain is old men, bent and dancing.
I know their wet song. It is thunder.
It is sage, stripped down to the warm smell of healing.
It carries me down
to its yearning dream of tides
with red turtles swimming in it,
dark turtles, old and silent
with yellow, open eyes.