Middle of Nowhere

NovPAD 2024 • Day 23

This month’s theme: “Where I Am: Poems of Place”

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11/23 • Middle of Nowhere • The Center of All Things

Half an hour         by state route
forty-five minutes         by gravel road
indeterminate distance         by foot
a river flows
fed by snowmelt
through the Olympics

          You are surrounded
hemmed in by power
that knows no human lord
         silent
generations decaying
where they fall
plunged beneath moss
like verdant buttercream

          Your bed will be laid
ancient and deep
before you arrive
sand pulverized
from bucking bronco boulders
tumbling and grinding
in the spring flood

          When you wake
you will plunge your head
beneath living waters

          All that day
you will hear no human striving
no planes will cross the sky
of this prophecy
and in your dominion
you will know the love
the Speaker has
for the Spoken

          You will sleep all afternoon
flat on your back
over swift waters
held unshakeable
by a log greater than your arm span
before climbing the waterfall
unafraid
in search of millipedes
more colorful than reef fish
ferns bursting
with progeneration
and the aroma of death
remembering how to live
         again
                  and again
                           and again

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Photo by Andrew S on Unsplash

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