Earthbones
It takes a lifetime walking
between the ethnoid bone and the horizon.
Shadows peel away
from time, the sun balances
on the fibula that rests
along the edge of a mesa, and the ribs
of a canyon pull apart
to let migrations through to open land
where vertebrae have risen
through the emptiness
that makes of the ground
a sacred space.
Skyscape
There is a sky that won’t descend from high
in the eternal realm but
grows out from the earth
with its cargo of storms and blades of sunlight.
It mirrors the land
it dominates, pulls thunder out of the infinite nowheres
that float behind the clouds,
and spans
the spaces from ice with no heart
to the midsummer glare
of rocks that think of themselves
as fallen suns.
Shadowland
The Earth’s long cliffs sway in hallucination’s light
where it falls between what belongs to the Earth
and what the sun has claimed
as its own.
.
David Chorlton
.