(untitled)

the night sleeps, petran lakewater
    cool and dim in this cerebral dusk.
the long flap of wings comes to rest
    on branch of snag,
    heron folds into itself, a roosted form,
        blanket of primaries

entire night sullen, distended,
awakened to a cause we know little,
    had once felt in falling prey
    on veldt, have lost,

an intensity engulfs the darkened scape,
    stunted lodgepole shake their names,
    species chaste and wild with cause
    or no cause,

black buzz of cicadas and marshy
    foam of shoreline, spectral

had once we felt this nonverbal
    press to the breast, the beat of
    a maternal pulse
    or our fetal own
    we lay in loam and algal strands
    as rich as these, and as old,

drawing strength from cord and
    wisdom from the press of will to
    eat, to mate -

on long montane nights like this,
I swear the blood comes rushing back,
    fed, laughing, lusty from its earthen sleep,
soil'd with the chase, with unimaginable
    pains of foodless nights, frigid winters,
    flooding rich and warm with
an intelligible choice,

yet antecendent to the
    abstract.
true, the mind differentiates, pulls the
    tree apart a hundred ways, fits,
    matches, reforms, then reassembles it
    again as the lash blinks,

but here, these are primal strands,
evisceral,
the mind in purest act - as

heron shifts to other foot.

Note:  Above two photos © Bruce G. Marcot; show a tarn (glacial valley) lake in Mount Rainier National Park, Cascade Mountains, Washington.

Back to Redwood Enormity
Back to The Plexus Home Page