To turn around and banish mountains
to the dead like Orpheus, expose
the pressed clay underneath them needing
to be broken and then held by roots of grasses:
I would walk and walk—collecting burrs and seed-cocks,
praising the lit curve of the horizon’s body—
breathe in the next small rise and pause on
its far side before descending into the sway.
And if my legs tired, I could make my bed where
grass would undress me, insinuate itself between skin
and muscle, divorce muscle from bone,
and weave the red fibers into the mat of soil and roots,
the cloth the earth puts on for us,
and we wrinkle it, we make patterns on it, as we walk.
Published in Grasslands Review (my first poetry publication), 2000
©Beth Partin 2000. All rights reserved.
