Thursday, July 08, 2010

Kansas Poet Laureate

Door of the Grass
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

for Beth

Where to go now that all roads dissolve?
How to follow deer paths or sudden partings of
big bluestem, little bluestem, switchgrass
into the field so deep that you can no longer see the edges?

No need to answer, says the wind. Just walk.
Just stop in this surprise of clearing
where some other has stopped before you.
Listen to the careful tremble, the heavier rushing
tumbling upward and out from the tops of
bordering cottonwoods. Let it sweep back
over you. Your mind only blossom and stubble,
breaking against what you thought you knew
until it too blows free or roots deeper
into something like bedrock turning under us.

Here in the house of the grass,
wind tells the sea in you, the old stars in you too,
welcome home.





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