The voice of the moon
is singing over land, trees otherwise dark,
the outer reaches married to long shadows.
You know this world
makes me sad, knowledge passed
on, but not recalled by most,
songs no longer anywhere but hidden.
Though the ice melting still has light,
how do you take it up to hold it?
The people before me,
some remember part of a song,
and there is a song I recall, almost forgotten.
I live for what little is left
this small portion of yearning
to part a history
of the universe,
a calling to the animals,
the primordial ocean, the germinating
ancient seeds, that moment they open
like a translation of thought
in the earth they desired
at a time we don’t remember, it was so long ago now.
But I knew a prayer woman
who went outside at this kind of moon
in beauty and grace
and a dress of stolen light,
seeing a sisterhood
knowing others were doing as she did,
she recalled the power of the word to create,
restore light, memory, and grace,
when she sang, by god,
light came from her breath
visible to everyone who saw it.
There is nothing you can say about this
anyone will believe, but she remembered
the horse dance, the turtle song,
the tick song, and the duck.
She is still
the one that remembers every morning
and calls to us
that portion of yearning,
our ancient home,
the places ancestral shadows have been the germinating instance,
have been our ecology, our language,
and so we have this to recall,
so step outside. Watch. Listen.