“And this, our life . . . finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”
— Shakespeare
Nurse Log
Steam floats up from a prone body,
an old log, mossy and damp.
I go, lie beside it, whisper,
let’s be organic together.
Out of the lichened wood, deer ferns
and the thumb of a coyote bush take root.
Fox scat in the shape of a cross
marks a passage.
There is a language larger
than words, the way breath rising
licks everything on its way up
and won’t be contained.
A varied thrush thuds to ground,
his voice a wooden whistling.
Red mud stains robe hem,
rumpled cuff, exposed wrist bone,
palm to redwood corpse.
Quiet again—just this
scuttling of cool air through weeds,
my fingers flushed with touching.
from Mosslight
FutureCycle Press, 2011