WEBVTT

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The last poem in this
book is called "Mythos."

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"When we returned home
there was the body

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of the Earth that
greeted us, the air

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thick with the scent of
those dusty arid flanks,

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the scent of the
ashes in our own bones

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flowering in the
fronds of the juniper,

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in the depths of
the rabbit brush.

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Coming back from the rush
and road of concrete canyons,

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the scent of
exhaust and gasoline

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rising from the
sidewalks and the walls.

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It was like flowering oneself
in the cells of one's body

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to breathe in nostrils
flaring, mouth

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inhaling the scent of the
Earth and what grew upon it.

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A body of infinite form, one
limb curving into the other,

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and the air like the
breath transpiring

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from its languid lips.

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I felt like a child again,
when driven out of the house

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by sadness, the piercing
cry of the metal larks

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perched in their kingdoms
of the air, spaced

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along the crests of
the telephone poles,

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calling me farther and
further into the distance.

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I would fling myself upon the
ground and lie upon the Earth.

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My arms outspread
as if crucified,

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but I was not crucified.

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I was one diving face
downward into the earth,

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feeling the pull upon
my atoms and cells,

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calling me back into the dust--

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the same dust that the Milky
Way scattered shimmering

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open the sky at night.

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The seeds of winnowing,
the ashes of harvest.

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As I lay there I was comforted.

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The earth itself became
my mother, and then by

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turns a father, a
friend, a lover,

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and in each of those moments,
as I lay upon the ground,

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I held out my hands in a
sign of great emptiness.

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For I could not grasp or
span that living form,

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but could only float upon it, as
the leaves of the water lilies

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float on the surface
of the water,

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holding themselves
millimeters above the rippling

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and broad palms of green.

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And in the infinite whispering,
the click of crickets

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caught in the grass, the
shifting labor of the ants

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I would hear not the ancient
voice of some muttering God,

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but the hum of
the Earth itself."

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