Tender Maps of Landscape
by Loralee Clark
Our stories are not told anymore;
are we not still sheaves of wheat,
gold stored for the future like
the moon that swells and hides again
to ponder questions answerable
when species are in concert
with one another like fungi
teaching land plants to root,
a flower able to commune
with one species of bat
that feeds the desert’s ecosystem,
the avocado reliant on the ground sloth,
now nurtured by the human:
fat, round seeds sprouting on windowsills?
When did our stories change?
The mutable, bubbling slime mold
still clings to life, turning the stick
the stone, the sand into more;
divine life always looks messy, treacherous, risky–
a vulva slick and bloody, having had another being
breach its threshold.
Have we forgotten the ways we married ourselves
to the lakes and shores, the lands,
how we wed ourselves to the forests,
the ways our vows slipped from our tongues
to breathe obligation to those in courtship?
Why have we ceased to hear the music
of landscape? What have our ears
longed to hear that we have
forgotten to sing?
Our stories were maps:
of pomegranate seeds, sweet and astringent;
syllables spoken, scattered
diverse as the multitudes of flowers
and insects in a meadow;
a woman digging through earth and sand
to find her bloodied, dismembered husband,
pressing his clotted muscle to her chest;
a man swallowing mouthfuls of sea, pridefully
embracing wave after wave for days on end.
These maps told us the pathways
the seasons would carry us, like children
home, always home.
