Unlearning

Well, last night I fell

in love with the

wildflower smell. Gave up

trying to eat the sky. Tongue froze

up from cold evening light. Thought

I heard a coyote howl (it could have been a dog

or a child or my mind) Made up a story

to explain the beat of the land (I said

it was an old octopus who climbed out of water

arms folded into foothills and later

became sand) Felt my bones age into womanhood.

Felt the end of an era. Felt the cliché in my throat

in my pants, in my blood, out my body.

There was salt in my ears-- that I didn’t understand

or couldn’t stand-- how to stand up without moving

farther from the ground. Well, last night it was easy

to think I could go unnoticed, slip

through the scarce spaces of evening, a child crossing

an old land. An old land teaching child. Child, learn how

to be solid. Learned how to shape herself. Learned how

to hold those curves like she wasn’t bleeding

down in her center. Learned how the mountains

grew-- ugly, guttural screams of rock.

Learned how the mountains ended-- bones scraping

the sky, looking like bruises. The earth scooped into ribcage.

Woman on her knees: flesh dappled, knees stinging

bare patches of skin, loose grass flying

into the wind. But unmoveable

unspeakable unquenchable unbendable

unloseable ungrievable unaskable

untrimmable. Was the land. Was the woman. Was the octopus

thinking when she lay her ballooning head in

that last crevice? In her stomach she must have

felt the clutch of an ending.

Felt an era spilling out.

And last night the whole world screeched

and slid into place. The dust did not

move except to crawl and settle, I am raw

and brittle but no longer fragile. The clouds, moving.

The sea, rocking. The mountains, eroded. Look how

the mountains ended, you could end up like that one day--

unbent, unsmoothed, unfolding.