So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome.
And it was so.
—Genesis 1:7
Who understood the language of rain
In the long afternoon, the fugitive sun,
The founding of summer in ice? Who saw
The dry Earth and said: Yes,
Here I am, I place my hand on your belly,
Your roaring cove, your hibernation,
Your memories turned to sheets of glass.
Someone awoke in that evening, soaked through,
Bedded down under chapel of spruce.
Someone asked: where has your blood
Borne you, now, loosed in rivulets
And birthed in mud, again, born
In the muggy anguish of early morning?
Someone, lifting tobacco from humid mouths,
Speaking, not in a dream but as a sheen, blinding,
Apprehended from a hostile bank. Saying,
Go out on the water. Away from these banks.
Paddle hard in the dawn, take rest at noon.
Listen, below, the falls blooming with runoff,
Detritus of destroyed ice, cracking visages,
Dissolutions of the past, which stored up in itself
That which it knew, in its dark mind,
You would come to seek
In some afternoon, crestfallen, abandoned, endless,
Engorged with green droplets, ghost tracks of rabbit,
Far-off stirrings—irrefutable hearsay—of the living.
Image: Koloman Moser, ‘Mermaid’ (1914)
this is excellent, thank you